LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THANATOPSIS 



AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 



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WILLIAM CULLF.N BRYANT 




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PHILADELPHIA 

HKNRY AI^TEMUS 
1895 



Copyrighted, 1895, by Henry Altemus. 



HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADELPHIA. 




WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



CONTKNTS 



PAGE 



The Ages 13 

To THE Past 32 

Thanatopsis 34 

The Lapse of Time 38 

To the Evening Wind 40 

I Forest Hymn 42 

The Old Man's Funeral 48 

The Prairies 50 

The Knight's Epitaph 55 

Seventy-six 58 

The Hunter of the Prairies .... 60 

A Song of Pitcairn's Island .... 62 

Rizpah , .... 64 

The Arctic Lover 68 

Romero 70 

Monument Mountain 73 

Song of Marion's Men 79 

9 



lO CONTENTS. 

PAGR 

The Disinterred Warrior 8i 

The Hurricane 83 

"Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids" 85 
Inscription for the Entrance to a 

Wood 86 

To A Mosquito 88 

" I Broke the Spell that Held Me 

Long" 92 

The Conjunction of Jupiter and 

, Venus 93 

*^To THE Fringed Gentian 97 

" Innocent Child and Snow-white 

Flower " 98 

An Indian at the Burial-Place of 

His Fathers 99 

To A Cloud 103 

" The Yellow Violet 104 

" I Cannot Forget with what Fervid 

Devotion" 106 

Mutation 108 

Hymn to the North Star 109 

The Twenty-second of December . in 



CONTENTS. II 

PAGE 

Hymn of the Waldenses 112 

Song of the Stars 114 

"No Man Knoweth His Sepulchre" 116 

"Blessed are They that Mourn" . 117 

The Death of the Flowers . . . . 118 

^^To a Water Fowl 121 

The Battlefield 122 

The Winds . 124 

The Green Mountain Boys 128 

The Future Life . . 129 

The Old Man's Counsri 131 

An Evening Reverie 135 

The Antiquity of Freedom .... 139 

A Hymn of the Sea 142 

The Stream of Life 145 

Midsummer 146 

Green River 147 

A Winter Piece 150 

Hymn to Death 155 

Lines on Revisiting the Country . . 163 

Upon the Mountain's Distant Head 165 

The Journey of Life 166 



1 2 CONTENTS 

PAEG 

Love and Folly 167 

The Love of God 169 

Earth 170 

Catterskill Falls 175 

Life 180 

The Fountian 182 



THE AGES. 

When to the common rest that crowns our 

days, 
Called in the noon of life, the good man goes. 
Or full of years, and ripe in wisdom, lays 
His silver temples in their last repose ; 
When, o'er the buds of youth, the death-wind 

blows, 
And blights the fairest; when our bitterest 

tears 
Stream, as the eyes of those that love us 

close, 
We think on what they were, with many fears 
Lest goodness die with them, and leave the 

coming years. 

And therefore, to our hearts, the days gone 

by- 
When lived the honored sage whose death 

we wept. 
And the soft virtues beamed from many an 

eye, 

13 



T4 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And beat in many a heart that long has 

slept — 
Like spots of earth where angel-feet have 

stepped — 
Are holy ; and high-dreaming bards have 

told 
Of times when worth was crowned, and faith 

was kept, 
Ere friendship grew a snare, or love waxed 

cold — 
Those pure and happy times — the golden days 

of old. 

Peace to the just man's memory, — let it grow 
Greener with years, and blossom through the 

flight 
Of ages ; let the mimic canvas show 
His calm benevolent features ; let the light 
Stream on his deeds of love, that shunned 

the sight 
Of all but heaven, and, in the book of fame, 
The glorious record of his virtues write, 
And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 
A palm like his, and catch from him the hal- 
lowed flame. 

But oh, despair not of their fate who rise 
To dwell upon the earth when we withdraw ; 



THE AGES. 15 

Lo ! the same shaft by which the righteous 

dies, 
Strikes through the wretch that scoffed at 

mercy's law, 
And trode his brethren down, and felt no 

awe 
Of Him who will avenge them. Stainless 

worth. 
Such as the sternest age of virtue saw, 
Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth 
From the low modest shade, to light and bless 

the earth. 

Has Natme in her calm, majestic march, 
Faltered with age at last ? does the bright sun 
Grow dim in heaven ? or, in their far blue 

arch. 
Sparkle the crowd of stars, when day is done, 
Less brightly ? when the dew-lipped Spring 

comes on. 
Breathes she with airs less soft, or scents the 

sky 
With flowers less fair than when her reign 

begun ? 
Does prodigal Autumn, to our age, deny 
The plenty that once swelled beneath his sober 

eye? 



I 6 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Look on this beautiful world, and read the 

truth 
In her fair page ; see, every season brings 
New change, to her, of everlasting youth ; 
Still the green soil, with joyous living things, 
Swarms, the wide air is full of joyous wings, 
And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep 
Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings 
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep 
In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the 

deep. 



Will then the merciful One, who stamped 

our race 
With his own image, and who gave them 

sway 
O'er earth, and the glad dwellers on her face. 
Now that our flourishing nations far away 
Are spread, where'er the moist earth drinks 

the day, 
Forget the ancient care that taught and 

nursed 
His latest offspring t will he quench the ray 
Infused by his own forming smile at first, 
And leave a work so fair all blighted and ac- 
cursed ? 



THE AGES. 17 

Oh, no ! a thousand cheerful omens give 
Hope of yet happier days whose dawn is 

nigh. 
He who has tamed the elements, shall not Hve 
The slave of his own passions ; he whose eye 
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, 
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span 
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high. 
In God's magnificent works his will shall 

scan — 
And love and peace shall make their paradise 

with man. 



Sit at the feet of History — through the night 
Of years the steps of virtue she shall trace, 
And show the earlier ages, where her sight 
Can pierce the eternal shadows o'er their 

face ; — 
When from the genial cradle of our race, 
Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant 

lot 
To choose, where palm-groves cooled their 

dwelling place, 
Or freshening rivers ran ; and there forget 
The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that 

heard them not. 



1 8 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Then waited not the murderer for the night, 
But smote his brother down in the bright day, 
And he who felt the wrong, and had the 

might, 
His own avenger, girt himself to slay ; 
Beside the path the unburied carcass lay ; 
The shepherd, by the fountains of the glen. 
Fled, while the robber swept his flock away 
And slew his babes. The sick, untended 

then, 
Languished in the damp shade, and died afar 

from men. 

But misery brought in love — in passion's 

strife 
Man gave his heart to mercy pleading long, 
And sought out gentle deeds to gladden life ; 
The weak, against the sons of spoil and 

wrong. 
Banded, and watched their hamlets, and 

grew strong. 
States rose, and, in the shadow of their might. 
The timid rested. To the reverent throng. 
Grave arid time-wrinkled men, with locks all 

white. 
Gave laws, and judged their strifes, and taught 

the way of right ; 



THE AGES. 19 

Till bolder spirits seized the rule, and nailed 
On men the yoke that man should never 

bear, 
And drove them forth to battle : Lo ! un- 
veiled 
The scene of those stern ages ! What is 

there ? 
A boundless sea of blood, and the wild air 
Moans with the crimson surges that entomb 
Cities and bannered armies ; forms that wear 
The kingly circlet, rise amid the gloom. 
O'er the dark wave, and straight are swallowed 
in its womb. 



Those ages have no memory — but they left 
A record in the desert — columns strown 
On the waste sands, and statues fall'n and 

cleft, 
Heaped like a host in battle overthrown ; 
Vast ruins, where the mountain's ribs of stone 
Were hewn into a city ; streets that spread 
In the dark earth, where never breath has 

blown 
Of heaven's sweet air, nor foot of man dares 

tread 
The long and perilous ways — the Cities of 

the Dead : 



20 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And tombs of monarchs to the clouds up- 
piled — 
They perished — but the eternal tombs re- 
main — 
And the black precipice, abrupt and wild, 
Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane ; — 
Hugh piers and frowning forms of gods sus- 
tain 
The everlasting arches, dark and wide, 
Like the night-heaven when clouds are black 

with rain. 
But idly skill was tasked, and strength was 
plied, 
All was the work of slaves to swell a despot's 
pride. 

And Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor 

reign 
O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke ; 
She left the down-trod nations in disdain. 
And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke, 
New-born, amid those beautiful vales, and 

broke 
Scepter and chain with her fair youthful 

hands : 
As the rock shivers in the thunder-stroke. 



THE AGES. 21 

And lo! in full-grown strength, an empire 
stands 
Of leagued and rival states, the wonder of the 
lands. 

Oh, Greece, thy flourishing cides were a 

spoil 
Unto each other ; thy hard hand oppressed 
And crushed the helpless ; thou didst make 

thy soil 
Drunk with the blood of those that loved 

thee best ; 
/\.nd thou didst drive, from thy unnatural 

breast. 
Thy just and brave to die in distant climes ; 
Earth shuddered at thy deeds, and sighed 

for rest 
From thine abominations ; after times 
That yet shall read thy tale, will tremble at 

thy crimes. 

Yet there was that within thee which has 

saved 
Thy glory, and redeemed thy blotted name ; 
The story of thy better deeds, engraved 
On fame's unmouldering pillar, puts to shame 
Our chiller virtue ; the high art to tame 



2 2 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

The whirlwind of the passions was thine 

own ; 
And the pure ray, that from thy bosom came, 
Far over many a land and age has shone, 
And mingles with the light that beams from 

God's own throne. 

And Rome — thy sterner, younger sister, she 
Who awed the world with her imperial 

frown — 
Rome drew the spirit of her race from thee, — 
The rival of thy shame and thy renown. 
Yet her degenerate children sold the crown 
Of earth's wide kingdoms to a Hne of slaves ; 
Guilt reigned, and woe with guilt, and 

plagues came down, 
Till the north broke its floodgates, and the 

waves 
Whelmed the degraded race, and weltered o'er 

their graves. 

Vainly that ray of brightness from above, 
That shone around the Galilean lake, 
The light of hope, the leading star of love. 
Struggled, the darkness of that day to break ; 
Even its own faithless guardians strove to 
slake, 



THE AGES. 23 

In fogs of earth, the pure immortal flame; 

And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed sake, 

Were red with blood, and charity became. 

In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a 

name. 

They triumphed, and less bloody rites were 

kept 
Within the quiet of the convent cell ; 
The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and 

slept, 
And sinned, and hked their easy penance 

well. 
Where pleasant was the spot for men to 

dwell, 
Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay, 
Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to 

tell. 
And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed 

the way. 
All in their convent weeds, of black, and 

white, and gray. 

Oh, sweetly the returning muses' strain 
Swelled over that famed stream, whose gen- 
tle tide 
In their bright lap the Etrurian vales detain, 



24 BRYANTS FOEMS. 

Sweet, as when winter storms have ceased to 

chide, 
And all the new-leaved woods, resounding 

wide, 
Send out wild hymns upon the scented air. 
Lo ! to the smiling Arno's classic side 
The emulous nations of the west repair, 
And kindle their quenched urns, and drink 
fresh spirit there. 

Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to 

rend 
From saintly rottenness the sacred stole ; 
And cowl and worshipped shrine could still 

defend 
The wretch with felon stains upon his soul ; 
And crimes were set to sale, and hard his 

dole 
Who could not bribe a passage to the skies ; 
And vice, beneath the mitre's kind control. 
Sinned gayly on, and grew to giant size. 
Shielded by priestly power, and watched by 

priestly eyes. 

At last the earthquake came — the shock, 

that hurled 
To dust, in many fragments dashed and 

strown, 



THE AGES. 25 

The throne, whose roots were in another 

world, 
And whose far- stretching shadow awed our 

own. 
From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, 
Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and 

fled; 
The web, that for a thousand years had 

grown 
O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread 
Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen 

thread. 

The spirit of that day is still awake» 

And spreads himself, and shall not sleep 

again ; 
But through the idle mesh of power shall 

break, 
Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain ; 
Till men are filled with him, and feel how 

vain, 
Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands. 
Are all the proud and pompous modes to 

gain 
The smile of heaven ; — till a new age expands 
Its white and holy wings above the peaceful 

lands. 



26 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

For look again on the past years ; — behold, 
Flown, like the nightmare's hideous shapes, 

away. 
Full many a horrible worship, that, of old, 
Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unques- 
tioned sway : 
See crimes that feared not once the eye of 

day, 
Rooted from men, without a name or place : 
See nations blotted out from earth, to pay 
The forfeit of deep guilt ; — with glad embrace 
The fair disburdened lands welcome a noble 
race. 

Thus error's monstrous shapes from earth are 

driven. 
They fade, they fly, — but truth survives their 

flight ; 
Earth has no shades to quench that beam of 

heaven ; 
Each ray, that shone, in early time, to light 
The faltering footsteps in the path of right, 
Each gleam of clearer brightness, shed to aid 
In man's maturer day his bolder sight. 
All blended, like the rainbow's radiant braid, 
Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that 

cannot fade. 



THE ACES. 27 

Late, from this western shore, that morning 

chased 
The deep and ancient night, that threw its 

shroud 
O'er the green land of groves, the beautiful 

waste, 
Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud 
Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the 

cloud. 
Erewhile. where yon gay spires their bright- 
ness rear. 
Trees waved, and the brown hunter's shouts 

were loud 
Amid the forest ; and the bounding deer 
Fled at the glancing plume, and the gaunt wolf 

yelled near. 

And where his willing waves yon bright blue 

bay 
Sends up to kiss his decorated brim, 
And cradles, in his soft embrace, the gay 
Young group of grassy islands born of him. 
And crowding nigh, or in the distance dim. 
Lifts the white throng of sails, that bear or 

bring 
The commerce of the world ; — with tawny 

limb, 



28 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And belt and beads in sunlight glistening. 
The savage urged his skiff like wild bird on the 
wing. 

Then, all this youthful paradise around, 
And all the broad and boundless mainland, 

lay- 
Cooled by the interminable wood, that 

frowned 
O'er mount and vale, where never summer 

ray 
Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his 

way 
Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild ; 
Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms 

gay, 
Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild. 
Within the shaggy arms of that dark forest 

smiled. 

There stood the Indian hamlet, there the lake 
Spread its blue sheet that flashed with many 

an oar, 
Where the brown otter plunged him from the 

brake, 
And the deer drank : as the light gale flew 

o'er. 



THE AGES. 29 

The twinkling maize-field rustled on the 

shore ; 
And while that spot, so wild, and lone, and 

fair, 
A look of glad and innocent beauty wore, 
And peace was on the earth and in the air. 
The warrior lit the pile, and bound his captive 

there : 



Not unavenged — the foeman, from the wood, 
Beheld the deed, and when the midnight 

shade 
Was stillest, gorged his battle-axe with blood ; 
All died — the wailing babe — the shrieking 

maid — 
And in the flood of fire that scathed the 

glade, 
The roofs went down ; but deep the silence 

grew. 
When on the dewy woods the day-beam 

played ; 
No more the cabin smokes rose wreathed 

and blue. 
And ever, by their lake, lay moored the light 

canoe. 



30 _ BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Look now abroad — another race has filled 

These populous borders — wide the wood re- 
cedes, 

And towns shoot up, and fertile realms are 
tilled ; 

The land is full of harvests and green meads ; 

Streams numberless, that many a fountain 
feeds, 

Shine, disembowered, and give to sun and 
breeze 

Their virgin waters ; the full region leads 

New colonies forth, that toward the western 
seas 
Spread, like a rapid flame among the autumnal 
trees. 



Here the free spirit of mankind, at length. 
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall 

place 
A limit to the giant's unchained strength, 
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race ? 
Far, like the comet's way through infinite 

space. 
Stretches the long untravelled path of light 
Into the depths of ages : we may trace, 
Distant, the brightening glory of its hght. 
Till the receding rays are lost to human sight. 



THE AGES. 31 

Europe is given a prey to sterner fates, 
And writhes in shackles ; strong the arms 

that chain 
To earth her strugghng multitude of states ; 
She too is strong, and might not chafe in 

vain 
Against them, but shake off the .vampyre 

train 
That batten on her blood, and break their 

net. 
Yes, she shall look on brighter days, and gain 
The meed of worthier deeds ; the moment set 
To rescue and raise up, draws near — but is not 

yet. 

But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, 
But with thy children — thy maternal care. 
Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on 

all— 
These are thy fetters — seas and stormy air 
Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where. 
Among thy gallant sons that guard thee well. 
Thou laugh'st at enemies : who shall then 

declare 
The date of thy deep-founded strength, or 

tell 
How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall 

dwell ? 



32 BR YANT ' S POEMS. 



TO THE PAST. 

Thou unrelenting Past ! 
Strong are the barriers round tliy dark domain, 

And fetters, sure and fast, 
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 

Far in thy realm withdrawn 
Old empires sit in suUenness and gloom, 

And glorious ages gone 
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 

Childhood, with all its mirth. 
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the 
ground. 

And last, Man's Life on earth, 
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. 

Thou hast my better years, 
Thou hast my earlier friends — the good — the 
kind, 

Yielded to thee with tears — 
The venerable form — the exalted mind. 

My spirit yearns to bring 
The lost ones back — yearns with desire intense. 

And struggles hard to wring 
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. 



TO THE PAST. 33 

In vain — thy gates deny- 
All passage save to those who hence depart ; 

Nor to the streaming eye 
Thou giv'st them back — nor to the broken heart. 

In thy abysses hide 
Beauty and excellence unknown — to thee 

Earth's wonder and her pride 
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea ; 

Labors of good to man, 
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith, — 

Love, that midst grief began, 
And grew with years, and faltered not in death. 

Full many a mighty name 
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered ; 

With thee are silent fame. 
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. 

Thine for a space are they — 
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last ! 

Thy gates shall yet give way. 
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past ! 

All that of good and fair 
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time. 

Shall then come forth, to wear 
The glory and the beauty of its prime. 



34 BR YA NT ' S POEMS. 

They have not perished — no ! 
Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet, 

Smiles, radiant long ago. 
And features, the great soul's apparent seat ; 

All shall come back, each tie 
Of pure affection shall be knit again ; 

Alone shall Evil die, 
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 

And then shall I behold 
Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, 

And her, who, still and cold, 
Fills the next grave — the beautiful and young. 



THANATOPSIS. 

To him who in the love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When 

thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come Hke a blight 



THANATOPSIS. 35 

Over thy spirit, and sad images 

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; — 

Go forth, under the open sky, and hst 

To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air, — 

Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee 

The all-beholding sun shall see no more 

In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall 

claim 
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thme individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix forever with the elements, 
To be a brother to the insensible rock 
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The 

oak 
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy 

mould. 
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone — nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 



36 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good. 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. — The hills 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods — rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured 

round all, 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven. 
Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 
Of morning — and the Barcan desert pierce, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregan, and hears no sound, 
Save his own dashings — yet — the dead are 

there; 
And millions in thtis'e solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 
So shalt thou rest — and what if thou withdraw 



THANA TOPSIS. 3 7 

Unheeded by the living — and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall 

come, 
And make their bed with thee. As the long 

train 
Of ages glide away, the sons of men. 
The youth in life's green spring, and he wljo goes 
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid. 
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed 

man, — 
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
By those, who in their turn shall follow them. 

So hve, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death. 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 

soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 



38 BRYANTS POEMS. 



THE LAPSE OF TIME. 

Lament who will, in fruitless tears, 

The speed with which our moments fly ; 

I sigh not over vanished years, 

But watch the years that hasten by. 

Look, how they come, — a mingled crowd 
Of bright and dark, but rapid days ; 

Beneath them, like a summer cloud. 
The wide world changes as I gaze. 

What ! grieve that time has brought so soon 

The sober age of manhood on ? 
As idly might I weep, at noon, 

To see the blush of morning gone. 

Could I give up the hopes that glow 

In prospect, like Elysian isles ; 
And let the charmmg future go, 

With all her promises and smiles .'' 

The future ! — cruel were the power 

Whose doom would tear thee from my heart. 
Thou sweetener of the present hour ! 

We cannot — no — we will not part. 



THE LAPSE OF TIME. 39 

Oh, leave me, still, the rapid flight 

That makes the changing seasons gay, 

The grateful speed that brings the night, 
The swift and glad return of day ; 



The months that touch, with added grace. 
This little prattler at my knee, 

In whose arch eye and speaking face 
New meaning every hour I see ; 



The years, that o'er each sister land 
Shall lift the country of my birth 

And nurse her strength, till she shall stand 
The pride and pattern of the earth ; 



Till younger commonwealths, for aid. 
Shall cling about her ample robe, 

And from her frown shall shrink afraid 
The crowned oppressors of the globe. 



True — time will seam and blanch my brow — 
Well — I shall sit with aged men, 

And my good glass will tell me how 
A grizzly beard becomes me then. 



40 BRYANTS POEMS. 

And should no foul dishonor lie 
Upon my head, when I am gray, 

Love yet shall watch my fading eye, 
And smooth the path of my decay. 

Then, haste thee, Time — 'tis kindness all 
That speeds thy winged feet so fast ; 

Thy pleasures stay not till they pall, 
And all thy pains are quickly past. 

Thou fliest and bear'st away our woes, 
And as thy shadowy train depart. 

The memory of sorrow grows 
A lighter burden on the heart. 



TO THE EVENING WIND. 

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou 
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, 

Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow ; 
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play. 

Riding all day the wild blue waves till now. 
Roughening their crests, and scattering high 
their spray. 

And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee 

To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the 



TO THE EVENING WIND. 4 1 

Nor I alone — a thousand bosoms round 
Inhale thee in the fulness of deHght ; 

And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night ; 

And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound. 
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 

Go forth into the gathering shade ; go forth, 

God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth ! 

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, 

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and 
rouse 
The wide old wood from his majestic rest. 

Summoning from the innumerable boughs 
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his 
breast : 
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly 
bows 
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, 
And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and 
the grass. 

The faint old man shall lean his silver head 
To feel thee ; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, 

And dry the moistened curls that overspread 
His temples, while his breathing grows more 
deep; 



42 BRYANTS POEMS, 

And they who stand about the sick man's bed, 

Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 
And softly part his curtains to allow 
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. 

Go — but the circle of eternal change. 
Which is the life of nature, shall restore, 

With sounds and scents from all thy mighty 
range, 
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once 
more ; 

Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange. 
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore ; 

And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 

He hears the rustling leaf and running stream. 



FOREST HYMN. 

The groves were God's first temples. Ere 

man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave. 
And spread the roof above them, — ere he 

framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down 
And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks 



FOREST HYMN, 43 

And supplication. For his simple heart 
Might not resist the sacred influences, 
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, 
And from the gray old trunks that high in 

heaven 
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the 

sound 
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed 
His spirit with the thought of boundless power 
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why 
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 
Only among the crowd, and under roofs 
That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, at 

least, 
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood. 
Offer one hymn — thrice happy, if it find 
Acceptance in His ear. 



Father, thy hand 
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou 
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst 

look down 
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, 



44 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy 

breeze, 
And shot toward heaven. The century-living 

crow 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and 

died 
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, 
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark. 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults 
These winding isles, of human pomp or pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show, 
The boast of our vain race to change the form 
Of thy fair works. But thou art here — thou 

fiU'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music ; — thou art in the cooler breath. 
That from the inmost darkness of the place. 
Comes, scarcely felt; — the barky trunks, the 

ground. 
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct v/ith 

thee. 
Here is continual worship ; — nature, here. 
In the tranquillity that thou dost love, 
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, 
From perch to perch, the solitary bird 



FOREST HYMN. 45 

Passes ; and yon clear spring, that, 'midst its 

herbs, 
Wells softly forth and visits the strong roots 
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale 
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left 
Thyself without a witness, in these shades. 
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength and 

grace 
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak — 
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem 
Almost annihilated — not a prince. 
In all that proud old world beyond the deep, 
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he 
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which 
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his 

root 
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare 
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower. 
With scented breath, and look so like a smile. 
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, 
An emanation of the indwelling Life, 
A visible token of the upholding Love, 
That are the soul of this wide universe. 

My heart is awed within me, when I think 
Of the great miracle that still goes on. 
In silence, round me — the perpetual work 



46 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed 
Forever. Written on thy works I read 
The lesson of thy own eternity. 
Lo ! all grow old and die — but see, again, 
How on the faltering footsteps of decay 
Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth 
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees 
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost 
One of earth's charms : upon her bosom yet. 
After the flight of untold centuries. 
The freshness of her far beginning lies 
And yet shall he. Life mocks the idle hate 
Of his arch enemy Death — yea, seats himself 
Upon the tyrant's throne — the sepulchre, 
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. For he came 

forth 
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end. 

There have been holy men who hid them- 
selves 
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave 
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they out- 
lived 
The generation born with them, nor seemed 
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks 



FOREST HYMN. ^y 

Around them ; — and there have been holy men 

Who deemed it were not well to pass Hfe thus 

But let me often to these solitudes 

Retire, and in thy presence reassure 

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, 

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink 

And tremble and are still. Oh, God ! when 

thou 
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire 
The heavens with faUing thunderbolts, or fill. 
With all the waters of the firmament. 
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the 

woods 
And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call, 
Uprises the great deep and throws himself 
Upon the continent, and overwhelms 
Its cities — who forgets not, at the sight 
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, 
His pride, and lays his strifes and folHes by ? 
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face 
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath 
Of the mad unchained elements to teach 
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate 
In these calm shades thy milder majesty, 
And to the beautiful order of thy works, 
Learn to conform the order of our lives. 



48 BRYANTS POEMS. 

THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL. 

I SAW an aged man upon his bier, 

His hair was thin and white, and on his brow 
A record of the cares of many a year ; — 

Cares that were ended and forgotten now. 
And there was sadness round, and faces bowed, 
And women's tears fell fast, and children 
wailed aloud. 

Then rose another hoary man and said, 
In faltering accents, to that weeping train, 

" Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead ? 
Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain. 

Nor when their mellow fruit the orchards cast, 

Nor when the yellow woods shake down the 
ripened mast. 

" Ye sigh not when the sun, his course fulfilled. 
His glorious course, rejoicing earth and sky, 

In the soft evening, when the winds are stilled. 
Sinks where his islands of refreshment lie, 

And leaves the smile of his departure, spread 

O'er the warm-colored heaven and ruddy 
mountain head. 

" Why weep ye then for him, who, having won 
The bound of man's appointed years, at last. 



THE OLD MAN'S FUNERAL. 49 

Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done. 

Serenely to his final rest has passed ; 
While the soft memory of his virtues, yet. 
Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun 
is set. 

" His youth was innocent ; his riper age. 

Marked with some act of goodness, every 
day; 
And watched by eyes that loved him, calm, 
and sage, 
Faded his late decUning years away. 
Cheerful he gave his being up, and went 
To share the holy rest that waits a life well 
spent. 

" That Ufe was happy ; every day he gave 
Thanks for the fair existence that was his ; 

For a sick fancy made him not her slave. 
To mock him with her phantom miseries. 

No chronic tortures racked his aged limb. 

For luxury and sloth had nourished none for 
him. 

"And I am glad that he has lived thus long. 
And glad, that he has gone to his reward ; 



50 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Nor deem, that kindly nature did him wrong, 

Softly to disengage the vital cord. 
When his weak hand grew palsied, and his eye 
Dark with the mists of age, it was his time to 
die." 



THE PRAIRIES. 

These are the Gardens of the Desert, these 
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful. 
For which the speech of England has no 

name — 
The Prairies. I behold them for the first. 
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight 
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo ! they 

stretch 
In airy undulations, far away. 
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell. 
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, 
And motionless forever. — Motionless ? — 
No — they are all unchained again. The clouds 
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath. 
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye ; 
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase 
The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South ! 
Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, 
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high, 



THE PRAIRIES. 5 1 

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not — ye have 

played 
Among the palms of Mexico and vines 
Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks 
That from the fountains of Sonora glide 
Into the calm Pacific — have ye fanned 
A nobler or a lovelier scene than this ? 
Man hath no part in all this glorious work : 
The hand that built the firmament hath heaved 
And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown 

their slopes 
With herbage, planted them with island groves, 
And hedged them round with forests. Fitting 

floor 
For this magnificent temple of the sky — 
.With flowers whose glory and whose multitude 
Rival the constellations ! The great heavens 
Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love, — 
A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue, 
Than that which bends above the eastern hills. 

As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed, 
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his 

sides. 
The hollow beating of his footsteps seems 
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those 
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here — 



52 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

The dead of other days ? — and did the dust 

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life 

And burn with passion ? Let the mighty 

mounds 
That overlook the rivers, or that rise 
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, 
Answer. A race, that long has passed away, 
Built them ; — a disciplined and populous race 
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the 

Greek 
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms 
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock 
The ghttering Parthenon. These ample fields 
Nourished their harvests, here their herds were 

fed, 
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed, 
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke. 
All day this desert murmured with their toils, 
Till twilight blushed and lovers walked, and 

wooed 
In a forgotten language, and old tunes. 
From instruments of unremembered form. 
Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man 

came — 
The roaming hunter tribes, warhke and fierce. 
And the mound-builders vanished from the 

earth. 



THE PRAIRIES. 53 

The solitude of centuries untold 
Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie wolf 
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den 
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the 

ground 
Where stood their swarming cities. All is 

gone- 
All— save the piles of earth that hold their 

bones — 
The platforms where they worshipped unknown 

gods— 
The barriers which they builded from the soil 
To keep the foe at bay — till o'er the walls 
The wild beleaguers broke, and, one by one. 
The strongholds of the plain were forced and 

heaped 
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood 
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres, 
And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast. 
Haply some solitary fugitive. 
Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense 
Of desolation and of fear became 
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die. 
Man's better nature triumphed. Kindly words 
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude con- 
querors 
Seated the captive with their chiefs ; he chose 



54 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

A bride among their maidens, and at length 
Seemed to forget, — yet ne'er forgot, — the wife 
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones 
Butchered amid their shrieks, with all his race. 

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise 
Races of living things, glorious in strength, 
And perish, as the quickening breath of God 
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man 

too — 
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long. 
And, near to the Rocky Mountains, sought 
A wider hunting-ground. The beaver builds 
No longer by these streams, but far away, 
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back 
The white man's face — among Missouri's 

springs, 
And pools whose issues swell the Oregan, 
He rears his little Venice. In these plains 
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues 
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp. 
Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake 
The earth with thundering steps — yet here I 

meet 
His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool. 

Still this great solitude is quick with life. 
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers 
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, 



THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. 55 

And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of 

man, 
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, 
Starthngly beautiful. The graceful deer 
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee, 
A more adventurous colonist than man. 
With whom he came across the eastern deep, 
Fills the savannas with his murmurings, 
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, 
Within the hollow oak. I listen long 
To his domestic hum, and think I hear 
The sound of that advancing multitude 
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the 

ground 
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice 
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn 
Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds 
Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain 
Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once 
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my 

dream, 
And I am in the wilderness alone. 

THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. 
This is the church which pisa, great and free, 
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained 
walls, 



56 BRYANTS POEMS. 

That earthquakes shook not from their poise, 

appear 
To shiver in the deep and voluble tones 
Rolled from the organ ! Underneath my feet 
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault. 
The image of an armed knight is graven 
Upon it, clad in perfect panoply — 
Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred 

helm, 
Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned 

shield. 
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim 
By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, 
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy. 
Why should I pore upon them ? This old tomb, 
This effigy, the strange disused form 
Of this inscription, eloquently show 
His history. Let me clothe in fitting words 
The thoughts they breathe, and frame his 

epitaph. 

"He whose forgotten dust for centuries 
Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom 
Adventure, and endurance, and emprise 
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung 
The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight. 
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose. 



THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. 57 

And bountiful, and cruel, and devout, 

And quick to draw the sword in private feud. 

He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed 

The saints as fervently on bended knees 

As ever shaven cenobite. He loved 

As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne 

The maid that pleased him from her bower by 

night, 
To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears 
His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks 
On his pursuers. He aspired to see 
His native Pisa queen and arbitress 
Of cities ; earnestly for her he raised 
His voice in council, and affronted death 
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck. 
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back, 
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay 
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen. 
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke, 
But would have joined the exiles, that withdrew 
For ever, when the Florentine broke in 
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts 
For trophies — but he died before that day. 

" He lived, the impersonation of an age 
That never shall return. His soul of fire 
Was kindled by the breath of the rude time 



58 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, 
Shuddering at blood ; the effeminate cavaher, 
Turning from the reproaches of the past, 
And from the hopeless future, gives to ease. 
And love and music, his inglorious life." 



SEVENTY-SIX. 

What heroes from the woodland sprung, 
When, through the fresh awakened land, 

The thrilling cry of freedom rung, 

And to the work of warfare strung 
The yoeman's iron hand ! 

Hills flung the cry to hills around. 

And ocean-mart replied to mart. 
And streams, whose springs were yet unfound, 
Pealed far away the startling sound 

Into the forest's heart. 

Then marched the brave from rocky steep, 

From mountain river swift and cold ; 
The borders of the stormy deep, 
The vales where gathered waters sleep, 
Sent up the strong and bold, — 



SEVENTY-SIX. 59 

As if the very earth again 

Grew quick with God's creating breath, 
And, from the sods of grove and glen, 
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men 

To battle to the death. 



The wife, whose babe first smiled that day, 

The fair fond bride of yestereve, 
And aged sire and matron gray. 
Saw the loved warriors haste away. 
And deemed it sin to grieve. 

Already had the strife begun ; 

Already blood on Concord's plain 
Along the springing grass had run, 
And blood had flowed at Lexington, 

Like brooks of April rain. 

That death-stain on the vernal sward 
Hallowed to freedom all the shore ; 

In fragments fell the yoke abhorred — 

The footstep of a foreign lord 
Profaned the soil no more. 



6o BRYANTS POEMS. 

THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES. 

Ay this is freedom ! — these pure skies 

Were never stained with village smoke : 
The fragrant wind, that through them flies, 

Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke. 
Here, with my rifle and my steed. 

And her who left the world for me, 
I plant me, where the red deer feed 

In the green desert — and am free. 

For here the fair savannas know 

No barriers in the bloomy grass ; 
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow, 

Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass. 
In pastures, measureless as air, 

The bison is my noble game ; 
The bounding elk, whose antlers tear 

The branches, falls before my aim. 

Mine are the river-fowl that scream 

From the long stripe of waving sedge ; 
The bear, that marks my weapon's gleam. 

Hides vainly in the forest's edge ; 
In vain the she-wolf stands at bay ; 

The brinded catamount, that lies 
High in the boughs to watch his prey, 

Even in the act of springing, dies. 



THE HUNTER. 6 1 

With what free growth the elm and plane 

Fling their huge arms across my way, 
Gray, old, and cumbered with a train 

Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray ! 
Free stray the lucid streams, and find 

No taint in these fresh lawns and shades ; 
Free spring the flowers that scent the wind 

Where never scythe has swept the glades. 

Alone the Fire, when frostwinds sere 

The heavy herbage of the ground, 
Gathers his annual harvest here, 

With roaring like the battle's sound. 
And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, 

And smoke-streams gushing up the sky : 
I meet the flames with flames again, 

And at my door they cower and die. 

Here, from dim woods, the aged past 

Speaks solemnly ; and I behold 
The boundless future in the vast 

And lonely river, seaward rolled. 
Who feeds its founts with rain and dew ? 

Who moves, I ask, its gUding mass. 
And trains the bordering vines, whose blue 

Bright clusters tempt me as I pass ? 



62 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Broad are these streams — my steed obeys, 

Plunges, and bears me through the tide. 
Wide are these woods — I thread the maze 

Of giant stems, nor ask a guide. 
I hunt, till day's last glimmer dies 

O'er woody vale and grassy height ; 
And kind the voice and glad the eyes, 

That welcome my return at night. 



A SONG OF PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. 

Come, take our boy, and we will go 

Before our cabin door ; 
The winds shall bring us, as they blow. 

The murmurs of the shore ; 
And we will kiss his young blue eyes, 
And I will sing him, as he hes. 

Songs that were made of yore : 
I'll sing, in his delighted ear. 
The island lays thou lov'st to hear. 

And thou, while stammering I repeat. 
Thy country's tongue shalt teach ; 

'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet, 
Than my own native speech : 

For thou no other tonsrue didst know, 



A SONG OF PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. 63 

When, scarcely twenty moons ago, 

Upon Tahete's beach. 
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine, 
With many a speaking look and sign. 

I knew thy meaning — thou didst praise 

My eyes, my locks of jet ; 
Ah ! well for me they won thy gaze, — 

But thine were fairer yet ! 
I'm glad to see my infant wear 
Thy soft blue eyes and sunny hair, 

And when my sight is met 
By his white brow and blooming cheek, 
I feel a joy I cannot speak. 

Come talk of Europe's maids with me, 
Whose necks and cheeks, they tell, 

Outshine the beauty of the sea. 
White foam and crimson shell. 

I'll shape like theirs my simple dress, 

And bind like them each jetty tress, 
A sight to please thee well : 

And for my dusky brow will braid 

A bonnet like an English maid. 

Come, for the soft low sunlight calls, 
W^e lose the pleasant hours ; 



64 BR YANTS POEMS. 

'Tis lovelier than these cottage walls, - 

That seat among the flowers. 
And I will learn of thee a prayer, 
To Him, who gave a home so fair, 

A lot so blessed as ours — 
The God who made, for thee and me, 
This sweet lone isle amid the sea. 



RIZPAH. 

And he delivered them into the hands of the 
Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill be- 
fore the I^ord ; and they fell all seven together, 
and were put to death in the days of the harvest, 
in the first days, in the beginning of barley- 
harvest. 

And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sack- 
cloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from 
the beginning of harvest until the water dropped 
upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither 
the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor 
the beasts of the field by night. — 2 Sam. xxi. 10. 

Hear what the desolate Rizpah said. 
As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead. 
The sons of Michal before her lay, 
And her own fair children dearer than they : 
By a death of shame they all had died, 
And were stretched on the bare rock, side by 

side. 
And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all 



RIZPAH. 65 

That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul, 
All wasted with watching and famine now, 
And scorched by the sun her haggard brow. 
Sat, mournfully guarding their corpses there, 
And murmured a strange and solemn air ; 
The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain 
Of a mother that mourns her children slain. 

" I have made the crags my home, and spread 
On their desert backs my sackcloth bed ; 
I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, 
And drunk the midnight dew in my locks ; 
I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain 
Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain. 
Seven blackened corpses before me lie, 
In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the 

sky. 
I have watched them through the burning day, 
And driven the vulture and raven away ; 
And the cormorant wheeled in circles round, 
Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground. 
And, when the shadows of twilight came, 
I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame. 
And heard at my side his stealthy tread. 
But aye at my shout the savage fled : 
And I threw the lighted brand, to fright 
The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night. 



66 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

" Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons, 
By the hands of wicked and cruel ones ; 
Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime, 
All innocent, for your father's crime. 
He sinned — but he paid the price of his guilt 
When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt ; 
When he strove with the heathen host in vain, 
And fell with the flower of his people slain, 
And the sceptre his children's hands should 

sway 
From his injured lineage passed away. 

" But I hoped that the cottage roof would be 
A safe retreat for my sons and me ; 
And that while they ripened to manhood fast, 
They should wean my thoughts from the woes 

of the past. 
And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride, 
As they stood in their beauty and strength by 

my side. 
Tall like their sire, with the princely grace 
Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face. 

" Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart, 
When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart ! 
When I clasped their knees, and wept and 
prayed. 



RIZPAH. 6j 

And struggled and shrieked to Heaven for aid, 
And clung to my sons with desperate strength, 
Till the murderers loosed my hold at length, 
And bore me breathless and faint aside. 
In their iron arms, while my children died. 
They died — and the mother that gave them 

birth 
Is forbid to cover their bones with earth. 



*' The barley -harvest was nodding white, 
When my children died on the rocky height, 
And the reapers were singing on hill and plain. 
When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. 
But now the season of rain is nigh. 
The sun is dim in the thickening sky. 
And the clouds in the sullen darkness rest 
Where he hides his light at the doors of the 

west. 
I hear the howl of the wind that brings 
The long drear storm on its heavy wings ; 
But the howling wind, and the driving rain 
Will beat on my houseless head in vain : 
I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare 
The beasts of the desert and fowls of air." 



68 BRYANTS POEMS. 

THE ARCTIC LOVER. 

Gone is the long, long winter night, 

Look, my beloved one ! 
How glorious, through his depths of light. 

Rolls the majestic sun. 
The willows, waked from winter's death. 
Give out a fragrance like thy breath — 

The summer is begun ! 

Ay, 'tis the long bright summer day : 

Hark, to that mighty crash ! 
The loosened ice-ridge breaks away — 

The smitten waters flash. 
Seaward the glittering mountain rides, 
While, down its green translucent sides. 

The foamy torrents dash. 

See, love, my boat is moored for thee, 

By ocean's weedy floor — 
The petrel does not skim the sea 

More swiftly than my oar. 
We'll go where, on the rocky isles, 
Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles 

Beside the pebbly shore. 

Or, bide thou where the poppy blows, 
With wind-flowers frail and fair, 



THE ARCTIC LOVER. 69 

While I, upon his isle of snows, 

Seek and defy the bear. 
Fierce though he be, and huge of frame. 
This arm his savage strength shall tame, 

And drag him from his lair. 



When crimson sky and flamy cloud 

Bespeak the summer o'er, 
And the dead valleys wear a shroud 

Of snows that melt no more, 
I'll build of ice thy winter home. 
With glistening walls and glassy dome, 

And spread with skins the floor. 



The white fox by thy couch shall play ; 

And, from the frozen skies. 
The meteors of a mimic day 

Shall flash upon thine eyes. 
And I — for such thy vow — meanwhile 
Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile. 

Till that long midnight flies. 



70 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

ROMERO. 

When freedom, from the land of Spain, 

By Spain's degenerate sons was driven, 
Who gave their willing limbs again 

To wear the chain so lately riven ; 
Romero broke the sword he wore — 

" Go, faithful brand," the warrior said, 
" Go, undishonored, never more 

The blood of man shall make thee red ; 

I grieve for that already shed ; 
And I am sick at heart to know, 
That faithful friend and noble foe 
Have only bled to make more strong 
The yoke that Spain has worn so long. 
Wear it who will, in abject fear — 

I wear it not who have been free ; 
The perjured Ferdinand shall hear 

No oath of loyalty from me." 
Then, hunted by the hounds of power, 

Romero chose a safe retreat, 
Where bleak Nevada's summits tower 

Above the beauty at their feet. 

There once, when on his cabin lay 
The crimson light of setting day. 
When even on the mountain's breast 
The chainless winds were all at rest. 
And he could hear the river's flow 



ROMERO. 71 

From the calm paradise below ; 
Warmed with his former fires again, 
He framed this rude but solemn strain. 

" Here will I make my home — for here at 
least I see, 

Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Lib- 
erty ; 

Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the 
unpruned lime, 

And the merry bee doth hide from man the 
spoil of the mountain thyme ; 

Where the pure winds come and go, and the 
wild vine strays at will, 

An outcast from the haunts of men, she dwells 
with Nature still. 

" I see the valleys, Spain ! where thy mighty 
rivers run, 

And the hills that lift thy harvests and vine- 
yards to the sun, 

And the flocks that drink thy brooks and 
sprinkle all the green, 

Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seamed, 
and olive shades between : 

I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pome- 
granate near, 



72 BRYANT'S POEMS, 

And the fragrance of thy lemon-groves can 
almost reach me here. 

" Fair — fair — but fallen Spain ! 'tis with a 

swelling heart, 
That I think on all thou might'st have been, 

and look at what thou art ; 
But the strife is over now — and all the good 

and brave, 
That would have raised thee up, are gone, to 

exile or the grave. 
Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the 

convent feast, 
And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the 

pampered lord and priest. 

" But I shall see the day — it will come before 
I die— 

I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an 
age-dimmed eye ; — 

When the spirit of the land to liberty shall 
bound. 

As yonder fountain leaps away from the dark- 
ness of the ground ; 

And, to my mountain cell, the voices of the 
free 

Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thun- 
ders of the sea." 



MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 73 

MONUMENT MOUNTAIN. 

Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild 
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, 
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot 
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops 
The beauty and the majesty of earth. 
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget 
The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou 

stand'st, 
The haunts of men below thee, and around 
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart 
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world 
To which thou art translated, and partake 
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt 

look 
Upon the green and rolling forest tops. 
And down into the secrets of the glens, 
And streams, that with their bordering thickets 

strive 
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at 

once. 
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds. 
And swarming roads, and there on solitudes 
That only hear the torrent, and the wind. 
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice 
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, 
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world, 



74 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

To separate its nations, and thrown down 
When the flood drowned them. To the north 

a path 
Conducts you up the narrow battlement. 
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild 
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, 
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, 
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliff's, 
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear 
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark 
With the thick moss of centuries, and there 
Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt 
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing 
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see 
Where storm and Hghtning, from that huge 

wall, 
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the 

base 
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear 
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound 
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below. 
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene 
Is lovely round ; a beautiful river there 
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads. 
The paradise he made unto himself. 
Mining the soil for ages. On each side 
The fields swell upward to the hills ; beyond, 



MONUMENT MO UNTAIN. 7 5 

Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise 
The mighty columns with which earth props 
heaven. 

There is a tale about these gray old rocks, 
A sad tradition of unhappy love 
And sorrows borne and ended, long ago, 
When over these fair vales the savage sought 
His game in the thick woods. There was a 

maid. 
The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed. 
With wealth of raven tresses, a light form. 
And a gay heart. About her cabin door 
The wide old woods resounded with her song 
And fairy laughter all the summer day. 
She loved her cousin ; such a love was deemed. 
By the morahty of those stern tribes. 
Incestuous, and she struggled hard and long 
Against her love, and reasoned with her heart. 
As simple Indian maiden might. In vain. 
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step 
Its lightness, and the gray old men that passed 
Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no more 
The accustomed song and laugh of her, whose 

looks 
Were hke the cheerful smile of Spring, they 

said, 



76 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Upon the Winter of their age. She went 
To weep where no eye saw, and was not found 
When all the merry girls were met to dance, 
And all the hunters of the tribe were out ; 
Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk 
The shining ear ; nor when, by the river's side, 
They pulled the grape and startled the wild 

shades 
With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian 

dames 
Would whisper to each other, as they saw 
Her wasting form, and say, the girl will die. 

One day into the bosom of a friend, 
A playmate of her young and innocent years. 
She poured her griefs. " Thou know'st, and 

thou alone," 
She said, " for I have told thee, all my love. 
And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life. 
All night I weep in darkness, and the morn 
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed, 
That has no business on the earth. I hate 
The pastimes and the pleasant toils that once 
I loved ; the cheerful voices of my friends 
Have an unnatural horror in mine ear. 
In dreams my mother, from the land of souls. 
Calls me and chides me. All that look on me 
Do seem to know my shame ; I cannot bear 



MONUMENT MO UNTAIN 7 7 

Their eyes ; I cannot from my heart root out 
The love that wrings it so, and I must die." 

It was a summer morning, and they went 
To this old precipice. About the cliffs 
Lay garlands, ears of maize, and shaggy skins 
Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe 
Here made to the Great Spirit, for they deemed, 
Like worshippers of the elder time, that God 
Doth walk on the high places and affect 
The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had on 
The ornaments with which her father loved 
To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl, 
And bade her wear when stranger warriors 

came 
To be his guests. Here the friends sat them 

down, 
And sang, all day, old songs of love and death. 
And decked the poor wan victim's hair with 

flowers. 
And prayed that safe and swift might be her 

way 
To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief 
Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. 
Beautiful lay the region of her tribe 
Below her — waters resting in the embrace 
Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades 



yS BRYANTS POEMS. 

Opening amid the leafy wilderness. 

She gazed upon it long, and at the sight 

Of her own village peeping through the trees. 

And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof 

Of him she loved with an unlawful love, 

And came to die for, a warm gush of tears 

Ran from her eyes. But when the sun grew 

low 
And the hill shadows long, she threw herself 
From the steep rock and perished. There was 

scooped. 
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave; 
And there they laid her, in the very garb 
With which the maiden decked herself for 

death 
With the same withering wild flowers in her 

hair. 
And o'er the mould that covered her, the tribe 
Built up a simple monument, a cone 
Of small loose stones. Thenceforward, all 

who passed, 
Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone 
In silence on the pile. It stands there yet. 
And Indians from the distant West, who come 
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid, 
Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and to this day 
The mountain where the hapless niaiden died 
Is called the Mountain of the Monument. 



SONG OF MARION'S MEN 79 

SONG OF MARION'S MEN. 

Our band is few, but true and tried, 

Our leader frank and bold ; 
The British soldier trembles 

When Marion's name is told. 
Our fortress is the good greenwood, 

Our tent the cypress-tree ; 
We know the forest round us. 

As seamen know the sea. 
We know its walls of thorny vines, 

Its glades of reedy grass, 
Its safe and silent islands 

Within the dark morass. 

Woe to the English soldiery 

That little dread us near ! 
On them shall light at midnight 

A strange and sudden fear : 
When waking to their tents on fire 

They grasp their arms in vain, 
And they who stand to face us 

Are beat to earth again ; 
And they who fly in terror deem 

A mighty host behind. 
And hear the tramp of thousands 

Upon the hollow wind. 



8o BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Then sweet the hour that brings release 

From danger and from toil : 
We talk the battle over, 

And share the battle's spoil. 
The woodland rings with laugh and shout, 

As if a hunt were up, 
And woodland flowers are gathered 

To crown the soldier's cup. 
With merry songs we mock the wind 

That in the pine-top grieves, 
And slumber long and sweetly, 

On beds of oaken leaves. 

Well knows the fair and friendly moon 

The band that Marion leads — 
The ghtter of their rifles, 

The scampering of their steeds. 
'Tis life our fiery barbs to guide 

Across the moonlight plains ; 
'Tis life to feel the night-wind 

That lifts their tossing manes. 
A moment in the British camp — 

A moment — and away 
Back to the pathless forest, 

Before the peep of day. 

Grave men there are by broad Santee, 
Grave men with hoary hairs, 



THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR. 8 1 

Their hearts are all with Marion, 

For Marion are their prayers. 
And lovely ladies greet our band, 

With kindliest welcoming. 
With smiles hke those of summer, 

And tears like those of spring. 
For them we wear these trusty arms, 

And lay them down no more 
Till we have driven the Briton, 

Forever from our shore. 



THE DISINTERRED WARRIOR. 

Gather him to his grave again 

And solemnly and softly lay. 
Beneath the verdure of the plain. 

The warrior's scattered bones away. 
Pay the deep reverence, taught of old. 

The homage of man's heart to death ; 
Nor dare to trifle with the mould 

Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath. 

The soul hath quickened every part — 
That remnant of a martial brow, 

Those ribs that held the mighty heart, 
That strong arm — strong no longer now. 



82 BR YANT' S POEMS. 

Spare them, each mouldering relic spare, 

Of God's own image ; let them rest. 
Till not a trace shall speak of where 
The awful hkeness was impressed. 

For he was fresher from the hand 

That formed of earth the human face, 
And to the elements did stand 

In nearer kindred than our race. 
In many a flood to madness tossed. 

In many a storm has been his path ; 
He hid him not from heat or frost, 

But met them, and defied their wrath. 

Then they were kind — the forests here. 

Rivers, and stiller waters paid 
A tribute to the net and spear 

Of the red ruler of the shade. 
Fruits on the woodland branches lay. 

Roots in the shaded soil below, 
The stars looked forth to teach his way, 

The still earth warned him of the foe. 

A noble race ! but they are gone, 

With their old forests wide and deep. 

And we have built our homes upon 
Fields where their generations sleep. 



THE HURRICANE. %l 

Their fountains slake our thirst at noon, 
Upon their fields our harvest waves, 

Our lovers woo beneath their moon — 
Ah, let us spare, at least, their graves ! 



THE HURRICANE. 

Lord of the winds ! I feel thee nigh, 
I know thy breath in the burning sky ! 
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein, 
For the coming of the hurricane ! 

And lo ! on the wing of the heavy gales, 
Through the boundless arch of heaven he 

sails ; 
Silent, and slow, and terribly strong, 
The mighty shadow is borne along. 
Like the dark eternity to come ; 
While the world below, dismayed and dumb, 
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere 
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear. 

They darken fast — and the golden blaze 
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze. 
And he sends through the shade a funeral 

ray — 
A glare that is neither night nor day, 
A beam that touches, with hues of death. 



84 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

The clouds above and the earth beneath. 
To its covert glides the silent bird, 
While the hurricane's distant voice is heard, 
Uplifted among the mountains round, 
And the forests hear and answer the sound. 

He is come ! he is come ! do ye not behold 
His ample robes on the wind unrolled ? 
Giant of air ! we bid thee hail ! — 
How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale ; 
How his huge and writhing arms are bent, 
To clasp the zone of the firmament, 
And fold, at length, in their dark embrace, 
From mountain to mountain the visible space. 

Darker — still darker ! the whirlwinds bear 
The dust of the plains to the middle air : 
And hark to the crashing, long and loud, 
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud ! 
You may trace its path by the flashes that start 
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart. 
As the fire-bolts leap to the world below, 
And flood the skies with a lurid glow. 

What roar is that ? — 'tis the rain that breaks 
In torrents away from the airy lakes. 
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground, 
And shedding a nameless horror round. 
Ah ! well-known woods, and mountains, and 
skies, 



FAIREST OF RURAL MAIDS. 85 

With the very clouds ! — ye are lost to my eyes. 

I seek ye vainly, and see in your place 

The shadowy tempest that sweeps through 

space, 
A whirling ocean that fills the wall 
Of the crystal heaven and buries all. 
And I, cut off from the world, remain 
Alone with the terrible hurricane. 



"OH FAIREST OF THE RURAL 
MAIDS." 

Oh fairest of the rural maids ! 
Thy birth was in the forest shades ; 
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, 
Were all that met thy infant eye. 

Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, 
Were ever in the sylvan wild ; 
And all the beauty of the place, 
Is in thy heart and on thy face. 

The twilight of the trees and rocks 
Is in the light shade of thy locks ; 
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves 
Its playful way among the leaves. 



86 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Thy eyes are springs, in whose serene 
And silent waters heaven is seen ; 
Their lashes are the herbs that look 
On their young figures in the brook. 

The forest depths, by foot unpressed, 
Are not more sinless than thy breast ; 
The holy peace that fills the air 
Of those calm solitudes is there. 



INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE 
TO A WOOD. 

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth 

which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and has seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm 

shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet 

breeze 
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft 

a balm 
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men 



ENTRANCE TO A WOOD. %"] 

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal 

curse 
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to 

Guilt 
Her pale tormentor, Misery. Hence these 

shades 
Are still the abodes of gladness ; the thick roof 
Of green and stirring branches is alive 
And musical with birds, that sing and sport 
In wantonness of spirit ; while below 
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, 
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the 

shade 
Try their thin wings and dance in the warm 

beam 
That waked them into life. Even the green 

trees 
Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to 

enjoy 
Existence, than the winged plunderer 
That sucks its sweets. The massy rocks them- 
selves. 



88 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate 

trees 
That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude 
Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark 

roots. 
With all their earth upon them, twisting high. 
Breathed fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its 

bed 
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 
In its own being. Softly tread the marge. 
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the 

wren 
That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, 
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to 

thee. 
Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass 
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. 



TO A MOSQUITO. 

Fair insect ! that, with threadlike legs spread 
out. 
And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing. 
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about. 



TO A MOSQUITO. 89 

In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, 
And tell how little our large veins should bleed, 
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need. 

Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse. 
Full angrily, men hearken to thy plaint. 

Thou gettest many a brush, and many a curse, 
For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and 
faint ; 

Even the old beggar, while he asks for food, 

Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could. 

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween. 
Has not the honor of so proud a birth, 
Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and 
green. 
The offspring of the gods, though born on 
earth ; 
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she. 
The ocean nymph, that nursed thy infancy. 

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung, 
And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew 
strong, 
Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, 
Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along : 
The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy 
way, 



go BR YANT'S POEMS. 

And danced and shone beneath the billowy 
bay. 

And calm, afar, the city spires arose, — 

Thence didst thou hear the distant hum of 
men, 

And as its grateful odors met thy nose, 

Didst seem to smell thy native marsh again ; 

Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight 

Thy tiny songs grew shriller with delight. 

At length thy pinions fluttered in Broadway — 
Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks 
kissed 
By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray 
Shone through the snowy veils like stars 
through mist ; 
And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin. 
Bloomed the bright blood through the trans- 
parent skin. 

Oh, these were sights to touch an anchorite ! 

What ! (io I hear thy slender voice complain .'' 
Thou wailest, when I talk of beauty's light, 

As if it brought the memory of pain : 
Thou art a wayward being — well — come near, 
And pour thy tale of sorrow in my ear. 



TO A MOSQUITO. 9 1 

What say'st thou — slanderer ! — rouge makes 
thee sick ? 
And China bloom at best is sorry food ? 
And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick. 

Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for 
blood? 
Go ! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime — 
But shun the sacrilege another time. 

That bloom was made to look at, not to touch, 
To worship, not approach, that radiant white ; 

And well might sudden vengeance Hght on such 
As dared, Uke thee, most impiously to bite. 

Thou shouldst have gazed at distance and ad- 
mired. 

Murmured thy adoration and retired. 

Thou'rt welcome to the town — but why come 
here 

To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee ? 
Alas ! the little blood I have is dear. 

And thin will be the banquet drawn from me. 
Look round — rthe pale- eyed sisters in my cell. 
Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell. 

Try some plump alderman, and suck the blood 
Enriched by generous wine and costly meat ; 



92 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, 
Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled 
feet: 
Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, 
The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls. 

There corks are drawn, and the red vintage 
flows 
To fill the swelling veins for thee, and now 
The ruddy cheek and now the ruddier nose 
Shall tempt thee, as thou flittest round the 
brow; 
And, when the hour of sleep its quiet brings, 
No angry hand shall rise to brush thy wings. 



I BROKE THE SPELL THAT HELD 
ME LONG." 

I BROKE the spell that held me long. 

The dear, dear witchery of song. 

I said, the poet's idle lore 

Shall waste my prime of years no more. 

For Poetry, though heavenly born. 

Consorts with poverty and scorn. 

I broke the spell — nor deemed its power 
Could fetter me another hour. 



JUPITER AND VENUS. 93 

Ah, thoughtless ! how could I forget 
Its causes were around me yet ? 
For whereso'er I looked, the while, 
Was Nature's everlasting smile. 

Still came and lingered on my sight 

Of flowers and streams the bloom and light, 

And glory of the stars and sun ; — 

And these and poetry are one. 

They, ere the world had held me long, 

Recalled me to the love of song. 



THE CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER AND 

VENUS. 

I WOULD not always reason. The straight 
path 
Wearies us with its never-varying lines, 
And we grow melancholy. I would make 
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit 
Patiently by the way -side, while I traced 
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness 
Around me. She should be my counsellor, 
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs 
Impulses from a deeper source than hers, 
And there are motions, in the mind of man, 
That she must look upon with awe. I bow 



94 BR YANT'S POEMS. 

Reverently to her dictates, but not less 
Hold to the fair illusions of old time — 
Illusions that shed brightness over life. 
And glory over nature. Look, even now, 
Where two bright planets in the twilight meet. 
Upon the saffron heaven, — the imperial star 
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn 
Pours forth the light of love. Let me believe, 
Awhile, that they are met for ends of good, 
Amid the evening glory, to confer 
Of men and their affairs, and to shed down 
Kind influence. Lo ! their orbs burn more 

bright. 
And shake out softer fires ! The great earth 

feels 
The gladness and the quiet of the time. 
Meekly the mighty river, that infolds 
This mighty city, smooths his front, and far 
Glitters and burns even to the rocky base 
Of the dark heights that bound him to the 

West ; 
And a deep murmur, from the many streets. 
Rises like a thanksgiving. Put we hence 
Dark and sad thoughts awhile — there's time 

for them 
Hereafter — on the morrow we will meet. 
With melancholy looks, to tell our griefs. 



JUPITER AND VENUS. 95 

And make each other wretched ; this calm 

hour. 
This balmy, blessed evening, we will give 
To cheerful hopes and dreams of happy days, 
Born of the meeting of those glorious stars. 

Enough of drought has parched the year, 
and scared 
The land with dread of famine. Autumn, yet, 
Shall make men glad with unexpected fruits. 
The dog-star shall shine harmless ; genial days 
Shall softly glide away into the keen 
And wholesome cold of winter ; he that fears 
The pestilence, shall gaze on those pure beams. 
And breathe, with confidence, the quiet air. 

Emblems of power and beauty ! well may 
they 
Shine brightest on our borders, and withdraw 
Toward the great Pacific, marking out 
The path of empire. Thus, in our own land, 
Erelong, the better Genius of our race, 
Having encompassed earth, and tamed its 

tribes, 
Shall sit him down beneath the farthest West, 
By the shore of that calm ocean, and look back 
On realms made happy. 



96 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Light the nuptial torch, 
And say the glad, yet solemn rite, that knits 
The youth and maiden. Happy days to them 
That wed this evening ! — a long life of love, 
And blooming sons and daughters ! Happy 

they 
Born at this hour, — for they shall see an age 
Whiter and holier than the past, and go 
Late to their graves. Men shall wear softer 

hearts. 
And shudder at the butcheries of war. 
As now at other murders. 

Hapless Greece ! 
Enough of blood has wet thy rocks, and 

stained 
Thy rivers ; deep enough thy chains have worn 
Their links into thy flesh ; the sacrifice 
Of thy pure maidens, and thy innocent babes. 
And reverend priests, has expiated all 
Thy crimes of old. ' In yonder mingling lights 
There is an omen of good days for thee. 
Thou shalt arise from 'midst the dust and sit 
Again among the nations. Thine own arm 
Shall yet redeem thee. Not in wars like thine 
The world takes part. Be it a strife of kings, — 
Despot with despot battling for a throne, — 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 97 

And Europe shall be stirred throughout her 

realms, 
Nations shall put on harness, and shall fall 
Upon each other, and in all their bounds 
The wailing of the childless shall not cease. 
Thine is a war for liberty, and thou 
Must fight it single-handed. The old world 
Looks coldly on the murderers of thy race, 
And leaves thee to the struggle ; and the new, — 
I fear me thou couldst tell a shameful tale 
Of fraud and lust of gain ; — ^thy treasury 

drained. 
And Missolonghi fallen. Yet thy wrongs 
Shall put new strength into thy heart and hand. 
And God and thy good sword shall yet work 

out, 
For thee, a terrible deliverance. 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue. 
That openest, when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 

Thou comest not when violets lean 

O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 



98 BRYANT'S POEMS, 

Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown. 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky. 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 



' "INNOCENT CHILD AND SNOW- 
WHITE FLOWER." 

Innocent child and snow-white flower ! 
Well are ye paired in your opening hour. 
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet, 
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet. 



AN INDIAN B URIAL-PLA CE. 99 

White as those leaves, just blown apart, 
Are the folds of thy own young heart ; 
Guilty passion and cankering care 
Never have left their traces there. 



Artless one ! though thou gazest now 
O'er the white blossom with earnest brow, 
Soon will it tire thy childish tye, 
Fair as it is, thou wilt thr(^ it by. 



Throw it aside in thy weary hour, , 

Throw to the ground the fair white flower, 
Yet, as thy tender years depart, 
Keep that white and innocent heart. 



AN INDIAN AT THE BURIAL-PLACE 
OF HIS FATHERS. 

It is the spot I came to seek, — 
My fathers' ancient burial-place, 

Ere from these vales, ashamed and weak. 
Withdrew our wasted race. 

It is the spot, — I know it well — 

Of which our old traditions tell. 



lOO BRYANT'S POEMS. 

For here the upland bank sends out 
A ridge toward the river- side ; 

I know the shaggy hills about, 
The meadows smooth and wide, 

The plains, that, toward the southern sky, 

Fenced east and west by mountains lie. 

A white man, gazing on the scene. 
Would say a lovely spot was here. 

And praise the lawns, so fresh and green. 
Between the hills so sheer. 

I like it not — I would the plain 

Lay in its tall old groves again. 

The sheep are on the slopes around, 
The cattle in the meadows feed. 

And laborers turn the crumbling ground. 
Or drop the yellow seed. 

And prancing steeds, in trappings gay, 

Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way. 

Methinks it were a nobler sight 

To see these vales in woods arrayed. 

Their summits in the golden light. 
Their trunks in grateful shade. 

And herds of deer, that bounding go 

O'er rills and prostrate trees below. 



AN INDIAN B URIAL-PLA CE. I O I 

And then to mark the lord of all, 

The forest hero, trained to wars, 
Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall, 

And seamed with glorious scars, 
Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare 
The wolf, and grapple with the bear. 

This bank, in which the dead were laid, 
Was sacred when its soil was ours ; 

Hither the artless Indian maid 

Brought wreaths of beads and flowers, 

And the gray chief and gifted seer 

Worshipped the god of thunders here. 

But now the wheat is green and high 
On clods that hid the warrior's breast, 

And scattered in the furrows lie 
The weapons of his rest. 

And there, in the loose sand, is thrown 

Of his large arm the mouldering bone. 

Ah, little thought the strong and brave, 
Who bore the lifeless chieftain forth ; 

Or the young wife, that weeping gave 
Her first-born to the earth. 

That the pale race, who waste us now, 

Among their bones should guide the plough. 



I02 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

They waste us — ay — like April snow 
In the warm noon, we shrink away ; 

And fast they follow, as we go 
Towards the setting day, — 

Till they shall fill the land, and we 

Are driven into the western sea. 

But I behold a fearful sign, 

To which the white men's eyes are blind ; 
Their race may vanish hence, like mine, 

And leave no trace behind. 
Save ruins o'er the region spread. 
And the white stones above the dead. 

Before these fields were shorn and tilled. 
Full to the brim our rivers flowed ; 

The melody of waters filled 
The fresh and boundless wood ; 

And torrents dashed and rivulets played, 

And fountains spouted in the shade. 

Those grateful sounds are heard no more, 
The springs are silent in the sun, 

The rivers, by the blackened shore, 
With lessening current run ; 

The realm our tribes are crushed to get 

May be a barren desert yet. 



TO A CLOUD. 103 

TO A CLOUD. 

Beautiful cloud ! with folds so soft and fair, 
Swimming in the pure quiet air ! 
Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below 
Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow ; 
Where, midst their labor, pause the reaper 

train 
As cool it comes along the grain. 
Beautiful cloud ! I would I were with thee 
In thy calm way o'er land and sea : 
To rest on thy unroUing skirts, and look 
On Earth as on an open book ; 
On streams that tie her realms with silver bands. 
And the long ways that seam her lands ; 
And hear her humming cities, and the sound 
Of the great ocean breaking round. 
Ay — I would sail upon thy air-borne car 
To blooming regions distant far. 
To where the sun of Andalusia shines 
On his own olive-groves and vines. 
Or the soft lights of Italy's bright sky 
In smiles upon her ruins lie. 
But I would woo the winds to let us rest 
O'er Greece long fettered and oppressed, 
Whose sons at length have heard the call that 

comes 
From the old battle-fields and tombs, 



I04 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And risen, and drawn the sword, and on the foe 
Have dealt the swift and desperate blow, 
And the Othman power is cloven, and the 

stroke 
Has touched its chains, and they are broke. 
Ay, we would linger till the sunset there 
Should come, to purple all the air, 
And thou reflect upon the sacred ground 
The ruddy radiance streaming round. 

Bright meteor ! for the summer noontide made ! 

Thy peerless beauty yet shall fade. 

The sun, that fills with light each glistening 

fold. 
Shall set, and leave thee dark and cold : 
The blast shall rend thy skirts, or thou may'st 

frown 
In the dark heaven when storms come down, 
And weep in rain, till man's inquiring eye 
Miss thee, forever, from the sky. 



THE YELLOW VIOLET. 

When beechen buds begin to swell. 

And woods the blue-bird's warble know, 

The yellow violet's modest bell 

Peeps from the last year's leaves below. 



THE YELLOW VLOLET. 105 

Ere russet fields their green resume, 
Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare. 

To meet thee, when thy faint perfume 
Alone is in the virgin air. 

Of all her train, the hands of Spring 
First plant thee in the watery mould. 

And I have seen thee blossoming 
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. 

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view 
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip. 

Has bathed thee in his own bright hue. 
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. 

Yet shght thy form, and low thy seat, 
And earthward bent thy gentle eye, 

Unapt the passing view to meet. 

When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. 

Oft, in the sunless April day. 

Thy early smile has stayed my walk, 

But 'midst the gorgeous blooms of May, 
I passed thee on thy humble stalk. 

So they, who climb to wealth, forget 
The friends in darker fortunes tried 

I copied them — but I regret 

That I should ape the ways of pride. 



I06 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And when again the genial hour 
Awakes the painted tribes of light, 

I'll not o'erlook the modest flower 
That made the woods of April bright. 



"I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT 
FERVID DEVOTION." 

I CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion 
I worshipped the visions of verse and of 
fame; 
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and 
ocean, 
To my kindled emotions, was wind over 
flame. 



And deep were my musings in life's early 
blossom, 
'Mid the twilight of mountain groves wan- 
dering long ; 
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed 
my full besom, 
When o'er me descended the spirit of song. 



/ CANNO T FORGET. 1 07 

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had 
listened 
To the rush of the pebble-paved river be- 
tween, 
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray pre- 
cipice glistened, 
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the 
scene ; 

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries 
steahng, 
From his throne in the depth of that stern 
solitude, 
And he breathed through my hps, in that 
tempest of feeling, 
Strains warm with his spirit, though artless 
and rude. 

Bright visions ! I mixed with the world and ye 
faded ; 

No longer your pure rural worshipper now ; 
In tiie haunts your continual presence pervaded, 

Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow. 

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the 
mountain. 
In deep lonely glens where the waters com- 
plain. 



I08 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the 
fountain, 
I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in 
vain. 

Oh, leave not, forlorn and forever forsaken, 
Your pupil and victim, to life and its tears ! 

But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken 
The glories ye showed to his earlier years. 



MUTATION. 
(a sonnet.) 

They talk of short-lived pleasure — be it so — 

Pain dies as quickly : stern, hard-featured 
pain 
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. 

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign ; 

And after dreams of horror, comes again 
The welcome morning with its rays of peace. 

ObUvion, softly wiping out the stain. 
Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to 

cease : 
Remorse is virtue's root ; its fair increase 

Are fruits of innocence and blessedness : 



HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. 1 09 

Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still re- 
lease 
His young limbs from the chains that round 
him press. 
Weep not that the world changes — did it keep 
A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed 
to weep. 



HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. 

The sad and solemn night 
Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires ; 

The glorious host of hght 
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires ; 
All through her silent watches, gliding slow, 
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, 
and go. 



Day, too, hath many a star 
To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they : 

Through the blue fields afar. 
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way : 
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim. 
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with 
him. 



no BR YANT'S POEMS. 

And thou dost see them rise, 
Star of the Pole ! and thou dost see them set. 

Alone, in thy cold skies, 
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet. 
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train. 
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western 



There, at morti's rosy birth. 
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air. 

And eve, that round the earth 
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there ; 
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that 

calls 
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's 
azure walls. 



Alike, beneath thine eye, 
The deeds of darkness and of light are done ; 

High toward the star-lit sky 
Towns blaze — the smoke of battle blots the 

sun — 
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud— - 
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea 
and cloud. 



TWENTY-SECOND DECEMBER. I 1 1 

On thy imaltering blaze 
The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, 

Fixes his steady gaze. 
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ; 
And they who stray in perilous wastes, by 

night, 
Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their 
footsteps right. 

And, therefore, bards of old, 
Sages; and hermits of the solemn wood, 

Did in thy beams behold 
A beauteous type of that unchanging good, 
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray 
The voyager of time should shape his heedful 
way. 



THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER. 

Wild was the day ; the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand, 

When first, the thoughtful and the free. 
Our fathers trod the desert land. 

They little thought how pure a light, 

With years, should gather round that day ; 



112 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

How love should keep their memories bright, 
How wide a realm their sons should sway. 

Green are their bays ; but greener still 

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, 

And regions, now untrod, shall thrill 

With reverence, when their names are 
breathed. 



Till where the sun, with softer fires, 
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, 

The children of the pilgrim sires 

This hallowed day like us shall keep. 



HYMN OF THE WALDENSES. 

Hear, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock 
Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock ; 
While those, who seek to slay thy children, 

hold 
Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold ; 
And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs 
That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are 

theirs. 



HYMN OF THE WALDENSES. 1 1 3 

Yet better were this mountain wilderness, 
And this wild life of danger and distress — 
Watchings by night and perilous flight by day, 
And meetings in the depths of earth to pray, 
Better, far better, than to kneel with them, 
And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn. 



Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm 

land 
Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand ; 
Thou dashest nation against nation, then 
Stillest the angry world to peace again. 
Oh, touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons — 
The murderers of our wives and little ones. 



Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth 
Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth. 
Then the foul power of priestly sin and all 
Its long-upheld idolatries shall fall. 
Thou shalt raise up the trampled and oppressed, 
And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest. 



114 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

SONG OF THE STARS. 

When the radiant morn of creation broke, 
And the world in the smile of God awoke, 
And the empty realms of darkness and death 
Were moved through their depths by his mighty 

breath. 
And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame 
From the void abyss by myriads came, — 
In the joy of youth as they darted away, 
Through the widening wastes of space to play, 
Their silver voices in chorus rung, 
And this was the song the bright ones sung. 

"Away, away, through the wide, wide sky, — 
The fair blue fields that before us lie, — 
Each sun, with the worlds that round him roll, 
Each planet, poised on her turning pole ; 
With her isles of green and her clouds of 

white, 
And her waters that lie like fluid light. 

" For the source of glory uncovers his face. 
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space; 
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides 
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides : 
Lo, yonder the living splendors play ; 
Away, on our joyous path, away ! 



SONG OF THE STARS. I I 5 

" Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar, 

In the infinite azure, star after star, 

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly 

pass ! 
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass ! 
And the path of the gentle winds is seen, 
Where the small waves dance, and the young 

woods lean. 

"And see, where the brighter day-beams pour, 
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower ; 
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of hues. 
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their 

dews ; 
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground. 
With their shadowy cone the night goes round ! 

** Away, away ! in our blossoming bowers, 
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, 
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn, 
See, Love is brooding, and Life is born. 
And breathing myriads are breaking from 

night, 
To rejoice like us, in motion and light. 

" Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres, 
To weave the dance that measures the years ; 



Il6 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent, 
To the farthest wall of the firmament, — 
The boundless \asible smile of Him, 
To the veil of whose brow your lamps are dim. 



"NO MAN KNOWETH HIS 
SEPULCHRE." 

When he, who, from the scourge of wrong, 
Aroused the Hebrew tribes to fly, 

Saw the fair region, promised long, 
And bowed him on the hills to die ; 

God made his grave, to men unknown, 
WTiere Moab's rocks a vale infold, 

And laid the aged seer alone 

To slumber while the world grows old. 

Thus still, whene'er the good and just 
Close the dim eye on life and pain. 

Heaven watches o'er their sleeping dust, 
Till the pure spirit comes again. 

Though nameless, trampled, and forgot. 
His servant's humble ashes lie. 

Yet God has marked and sealed the spot, 
To call its inmates to the sky. 



BLESSED ARE THEY. II7 

"BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN." 

Oh, deem not they are blest alone 
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep ; 

The Power who pities man, has shown 
A blessing for the eyes that weep. 

The light of smiles shall fill again 
The lids that overflow with tears ; 

And weary hours of woe and pain 
Are promises of happier years. 

There is a day of sunny rest 

For every dark and troubled night ; 

And grief may bide, an evening guest. 
But joy shall come with early light. 

And thou, who, o'er thy friend's low bier 
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain, 

Hope that a brighter, happier sphere, 
Will give him to thy arms again. 

Nor let the good man's trust depart. 
Though life its common gifts deny, 

Though with a pierced and bleeding heart. 
And spurned of men, he goes to die. 



1 1 8 BR YANT'S POEMS. 

For God has marked each sorrowing day, 
And numbered every secret tear, 

And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 
For all his children suffer here. 



THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. 

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of 
the year, 

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and 
meadows brown and sear. 

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the with- 
ered leaves lie dead ; 

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the 
rabbit's tread. 

The robin and the wren are flown, and from 
the shrubs the jay, 

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through 
all the gloomy day. 



Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, 

that lately sprang and stood 
In brighter light and softer air, a beauteous 

sisterhood ? 



DEA TH OF THE FLO WERS. I 1 9 

Alas ! they all are in their graves, the gentle 

race of flowers 
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and 

good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold 

November rain. 
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely 

ones again. 



The wind-flower and the violet, they perished 

long ago. 
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the 

summer glow ; 
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in 

the wood. 
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in 

autumn beauty stood, 
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as 

falls the plague on men, 
And the brightness of their smile was gone, 

from upland, glade, and glen. 



And now, when comes the calm mild day, as 

still such days will come, 
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their 

winter home : 



I20 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, 

though all the trees are still, 
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of 

the rill. 
The south wind searches for the flowers whose 

fragrance late he bore, 
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the 

stream no more. 



And then I think of one who in her youthful 

beauty died. 
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded 

by my side; 
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the 

forest cast the leaf. 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a 

hfe so brief: 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young 

friend of ours, 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with 

the flowers. 



TO A WATERFOWL. 121 

TO A WATERFOWL. 

Whither, 'midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of 

day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy soHtary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong. 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast. 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere. 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. 

Though the dark night is near. 



122 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall 
bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 

flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 



THE BATTLE-FIELD. 

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands. 
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd. 

And fiery hearts and armed hands 
Encountered in the battle cloud. 

Ah ! never shall the land forget 

How gushed the life-blood of her brave- 



THE BA TTLE-FIELD. I 2 ;: 

Gushed, warm with hope and valor yet, 
Upon the soil they fought to save. 

Now all is calm and fresh and still, 

Alone the chirp of flitting bird, 
And talk of children on the hill. 

And bell of wandering kine, are heard. 

No solemn host goes trailing by 

The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain 
Men start not at the battle cry ; 

Oh, be it never heard again ! 

Soon rested those who fought — but thou, 
Who minglest in the harder strife 

For truths which men receive not now, 
Thy warfare only ends with life. 

A friendless warfare ! lingering long 
Through weary day and weary year ; 

A wild and many-weaponed throng 
Hang on thy front and flank and rear. 

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 
And blench not at thy chosen lot ; 

The timid good may stand aloof. 

The sage may frown — yet faint thou not ! 



124 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast. 

The hissing, stinging bolt of scorn • 
For with thy side shall dwell, at last, 

The victory of endurance born. 

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ; 

The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, 

And dies among his worshippers. 

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, 

When those who helped thee flee in fear, 

Die full of hope and manly trust, 
Like those who fell in battle here. 

Another hand thy sword shall wield, 
Another hand the standard wave, 

Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave ! 



THE WINDS. 

Ye winds, ye unseen currents of the air. 
Softly ye played a few brief hours ago ; 

Ye bore the murmuring bee; ye tossed the hair 
O'er maiden cheeks, that took a fresher glow ; 



THE WINDS. 125 

Ye rolled the round white cloud through depths 

of blue.; 
Ye shook from shaded flowers the lingering dew; 
Before you the catalpa's blossoms flew, 

Light blossoms, dropping on the grass like 



How are ye changed ! Ye take the cataract's 
sound ; 

Ye take the whirlpool's fury and its might ; 
The mountain shudders as ye sweep the ground ; 

The valley woods lie prone beneath your 
flight. 
The clouds before you shoot like eagles past ; 
The homes of men are rocking in your blast ; 
Ye lift the roofs like autumn leaves, and cast, 

Skyward, the whirHng fragments out of sight. 

The weary fowls of heaven make wing in vain. 

To 'scape your wrath ; ye seize and dash 
them dead. 
Against the earth ye drive the roaring rain ; 

The harvest field becomes a river's bed ; 
And torrents tumble from the hills around, 
Plains turn to lakes, and villages are drowned, 
And waihng voices, 'midst the tempest's sound, 

Rise, as the rushing waters swell and spread. 



126 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Ye dart upon the deep, and straight is heard 
A wilder roar, and men grow pale, and pray ; 

Ye fling its floods around you, as a bird 

Flings o'er his shivering plumes the fountain's 
spray. 

See ! to the breaking mast the sailor clings ; 

Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs, 

And take the mountain billow on your wings, 
And pile the wreck of navies round the bay. 

Why rage ye thus ? — no strife for liberty 

Has made you mad ; no tyrant, strong 
through fear. 
Has chained your pinions till ye wrenched 
them free, 
Andrushedinto the unmeasured atmosphere : 
For ye were born in freedom where ye blow ; 
Free o'er the mighty deep to come and go ; 
Earth's solemn woods were yours, her wastes 
of snow. 
Her isles where summer blossoms all the year. 

O ye wild winds, a mightier Power than yours 
In chains upon the shore of Europe lies ; 

The sceptered throng, whose fetters he endures. 
Watch his mute throes with terror in their 
eyes : 



THE WINDS. 127 

And armed warriors all around him stand, 
And, as he struggles, tighten every band, 
And lift the heavy spear, with threatening hand, 
To pierce the victim, should he strive to rise. 

Yet oh, when that wronged Spirit of our race 
Shall break, as soon he must, his long-worn 
chains, 
And leap in freedom from his prison-place. 

Lord of his ancient hills and fruitful plains. 
Let him not rise, like these mad winds of air, 
To waste the loveliness that time could spare. 
To fill the earth with woe, and blot her fair 
Unconscious breast with blood from human 
veins. 

But may he like the Spring-time come abroad, 
Who crumbles winter's gyves with gentle 

might. 
When in the genial breeze, the breath of God, 
Come spouting up the unsealed springs to light ; 
Flowers start from their dark prisons at his feet. 
The woods, long dumb, await to hymnings 

sweet. 
And morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost 

meet. 
Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient 

night. 



128 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS. 

Here we halt our march, and pitch our tent, 

On the rugged forest ground. 
And light our fire with the branches rent. 

By winds from the beeches round. 
Wild storms have torn this ancient wood. 

But a wilder is at hand. 
With hail of iron and rain of blood, 

To sweep and scath the land. 

How the bark waste rings with voices shrill. 

That startle the sleeping bird, 
To-morrow eve must the voice be still, 

And the step must fall unheard. 
The Briton lies by the blue Champlain, 

In Ticonderoga's towers. 
And ere the sun rise twice again. 

The towers and the lake are ours. 

Fill up the bowl from the brook that glides, 

Where the fireflies light the brake ; 
A ruddier juice the Briton hides, 

In his fortress by the lake. 
Build high the fire, till the panther leap 

From his lofty perch in fright. 
And we'll strengthen our weary arms with sleep, 

For the deeds of to-morrow nisrht. 



THE FUTURE LIFE. I 29 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 

How shall I know thee in the sphere which 
keeps 

The disembodied spirits of the dead. 
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 

And perishes among the dust we tread ? 



For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not ; 

Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there ? 
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were 
given ? 
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer. 
Shall it be banished from thy tongue in 
heaven ? 



In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing 
wind, 

In the resplendence of that glorious sphere. 
And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 

Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here ? 



130 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

The love that hved through all the stormy past, 
And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 

And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 
Shall it expire with life, and be no more ? 

A happier lot than mine, and larger light. 
Await thee there ; for thou hast bowed thy 
will 

In cheerful homage to the rule of right. 
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. 

For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell. 
Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the 
scroll ; 

And wrath hath left its scar — that fire of hell 
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Yet, though thou wear'st the glory of the sky, 
Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name. 

The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye. 
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the 
same? 

Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home. 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — 

The wisdom which is love — till I become 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss ? 



THE OLD MAN'S COUNSEL. 131 



THE OLD MAN'S COUNSEL. 

Among our hills and valleys, I have known 
Wise and grave men, who, while their diligent 

hands 
Tendered or gathered in the fruits of earth, 
Were reverent learners in the solemn school 
Of nature. Not in vain to them were sent 
Seed-time and harvest, or the vernal shower 
That darkened the brown tilth, or snow that 

beat 
On the white winter hills. Each brought, in 

turn. 
Some truth, some lesson on the life of man, 
Or recognition of the Eternal mind 
Who veils his glory with the elements. 



One such I knew long since, a white-haired 
man, 
Pithy of speech, and merry when he would ; 
A genial optimist, who daily drew 
From what he saw his quaint moralities. 
Kindly he held communion, though so old. 
With me a dreaming boy, and taught me 

much 
That books tell not, and I shall ne'er forget. 



132 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

The sun of May was bright in middle heaven, 
And steeped the sprouting forests, the green 

hills 
And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light. 
Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds 
Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom. 
The robin warbled forth his full clear note 
For hours, and wearied not. Within the 

woods, 
Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce 

cast 
A shade, gay circles of anemones 
Danced on their stalks ; the shadbush, white 

with flowers. 
Brightened the glens ; the new-leaved butter- 
nut 
And quivering poplar to the roving breeze 
Gave a balsamic fragrance. In the fields 
I saw the pulses of the gentle wind 
On the young grass. My heart was touched 

with joy 
At so much beauty, flushing every hour 
Into a fuller beauty ; but my friend, 
The thoughtful ancient, standing at my side, 
Gazed on it mildly sad. I asked him why. 



THE OLD MAN'S COUNSEL. 133 

"Well may'st thou join in gladness," he re- 
plied, 
"With the glad earth, her springing plants and 

flowers. 
And this soft wind, the herald of the green 
Luxuriant summer. Thou art young like 

them. 
And well may'st thou rejoice. But while the 

flight 
Of seasons fills and knits thy spreading frame, 
It withers mine, and thins my hair, and dims 
These eyes, whose fading light shall soon be 

quenched 
In utter darkness. Hearest thou that bird ?" 



I listened, and from 'midst the depth of 

woods 
Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears 
A sable ruff around his mottled neck ; 
Partridge they call him by our northern streams, 
And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 
'Gamst his barred sides his speckled wings, and 

made 
A sound like distant thunder ; slow the strokes 
At first, then faster and faster, till at length 
They passed into a murmur and were still. 



134 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

" There hast thou," said my friend, " a fitting 
type 
Of human life. 'Tis an old truth, I know, 
But images like these revive the power 
Of long familiar truths. Slow pass our days 
In childhood, and the hours of Hght are long 
Betwixt the morn and eve ; with swifter lapse 
They glide in manhood, and in age they fly ; 
Till days and seasons flit before the mind 
As flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm. 
Seen rather than distinguished. Ah ! I seem 
As if I sat within a helpless bark. 
By swiftly running waters hurried on 
To shoot some mighty cliff. Along the banks 
Grove after grove, rock after frowning rock, 
Bare sands and pleasant homes, and flowery 

nooks. 
And isles and whirlpools in the stream, appear 
Each after each, but the devoted skiff 
Darts by so swiftly that their images 
Dwell not upon the mind, or only dwell 
In dim confusion ; faster yet I sweep 
By other banks and the great gulf is near. 

"Wisely, my sen, while yet thy days are 
long, 
And this fair change of seasons passes slow, 



AN EVENING REVERIE. 1 35 

Gather and treasure up the good they yield — 
All that they teach of virtue, of pure thoughts 
And kind affections, reverence for thy God 
And for thy brethren ; so when thou shalt come 
Into these barren years, thou may'st not bring 
A mind unfurnished and a withered heart." 

Long since that white-haired ancient slept — 

but still, 
When the red flower-buds crowd the orchard 

bough, 
And the ruffed grouse is drumming far within 
The woods, his venerable form again 
Is at my side, his voice is in my ear. 



AN EVENING REVERIE. 

(from an unfinished poem.) 

The summer day is closed — the sun is set : 
Well they have done their office, those bright 

hours. 
The latest of whose train goes softly out 
In the red West. The green blade of the 

ground 
Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the 

young twig 



136 BR YANT'S POEMS, 

Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun ; 
Flowers of the garden and the waste have 

blown 
And withered ; seeds have fallen upon the soil, 
From bursting cells, and in their graves await 
Their resurrection. Insects from the pools 
Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, 
That now are still forever ; painted moths 
Have wandered the blue sky, and died again ; 
The mother-bird hath broken, for her brood, 
Their prison shell, or shoved them from the 

nest. 
Plumed for their earliest flight. In bright 

alcoves. 
In woodland cottages with barky walls. 
In noisome cells of the tumultuous town, 
Mothers have clasped with joy the new-born 

babe. 
Graves by the lonely forest, by the shore 
Of rivers and of ocean, by the ways 
Of the thronged city, have been hollowed out 
And filled, and closed. This day hath parted 

friends 
That ne'er before were parted ; it hath knit 
New friendships; it hath seen the maiden 

plight 
Her faith, and trust her peace to him who long 



AN E VENING RE VERIE. 1 3 7 

Had wooed ; and it hath heard, from hps which 

late 
Were eloquent of love, the first harsh word, 
That told the wedded one her peace was flown. 
Farewell to the sweet sunshine ! One glad day 
Is added now to Childhood's merry days, 
And one calm day to those of quiet Age. 
Still the fleet hours run on ; and as I lean, 
Amid the thickening darkness, lamps are ht. 
By those who watch the dead, and those who 

twine 
Flowers for the bride. The mother from the 

eyes 
Of her sick infant shades the painful light, 
And sadly listens to his quick-drawn breath. 
Oh thou great Movement of the Universe, 
Or Change, or Flight of Time — for ye are 

one ! 
That bearest, silently, this visible scene 
Into night's shadow and the streaming rays 
Of starlight, whither art thou bearing me ? 
I feel the mighty current sweep me on, 
Yet know not whither. Man foretells afar 
The courses of the stars ; the very hour 
He knows when they shall darken or grow 

bright ; 
Yet doth the eclipse of Sorrow and of Death 



138 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Come unforewarned. Who next, of those I 

love. 
Shall pass from life, or, sadder yet, shall fall 
From virtue ? Strife with foes, or bitterer strife 
With friends, or shame and general scorn of 

men — 
Which who can bear ? — or the fierce rank of 

pain. 
Lie they within my path ? Or shall the years 
Push me, with soft and inoffensive pace. 
Into the stilly twilight of my age ? 
Or do the portals of another life 
Even now, while I am glorying in my strength. 
Impend around me ? Oh ! beyond that bourne, 
In the vast cycle of being which begins 
At that dread threshold, with what fairer forms 
Shall the great law of change and progress 

clothe 
Its workings ? Gently — so have good men 

taught — 
Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide 
Into the new ; the eternal flow of things. 
Like a bright river of the fields of heaven. 
Shall journey onward in perpetual peace. 



ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. I 39 

THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. 

Here are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled 

pines, 
That stream with gray-green mosses ; here the 

ground 
Was never trenched by spade, and flowers 

spring up 
Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet 
To linger here, among the flittering birds, 
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and 

winds 
That shake the leaves, and scatter as they pass, 
A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set 
With pale blue berries. In these peaceful 

shades — 
Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old — 
My thoughts go up the long dim path of years. 
Back to the earliest days of hberty. 

Oh Freedom ! thou art not, as poets dream, 
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, 
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap 
With which the Roman master crowned his 

slave 
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man. 
Armed to the teeth, art thou ; one mailed hand 



I40 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; 

thy brow, 
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred 
With tokens of old wars ; thy massive limbs 
Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has 

launched 
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee ; 
They could not quench the life thou hast from 

heaven. 
Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, 
And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires. 
Have forged thy chain ; yet, while he deems 

thee bound. 
The links are shivered, and the prison walls 
Fall outward : terribly thou springest forth. 
As springs the flame above a burning pile. 
And shoutest to the nations, who return 
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. 

Thy birthright was not given by human 

hands : 
Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant 

fields, 
While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with 

him. 
To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars. 
And teach the reed to utter simple airs. 



ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM. 141 

Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, 
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf. 
His only foes ; and thou with him didst draw 
The earliest furrows on the mountain side, 
Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself, 
Thy enemy, although of reverend look, 
Hoary with many years, and far obeyed. 
Is later born than thou ; and as he meets 
The grave defiance of thine elder eye, 
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. 

Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of 

years. 
But he shall fade into a feebler age ; 
Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares, 
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap 
His withered hands, and from their ambush call 
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send 
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien, 
To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words 
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by 

stealth, 
Twine around thee threads of steel, light thread 

on thread, 
That grow to fetters ; or bind down thy arms 
With chains concealed in chaplets. Oh ! not 

yet 



142 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

May'st thou unbrace thy corselet, nor lay by 
Thy sword ; nor yet, O Freedom ! close thy lids 
In slumber ; for thine enemy never sleeps, 
And thou must watch and combat till the day 
Of the new earth and heaven. But wouldst 

thou rest 
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men. 
These old and friendly solitudes invite 
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees 
Were young upon the un violated earth, 
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, 
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced. 



A HYMN OF THE SEA. 

The sea is mighty, but a mightier sways 
His restless billows. Thou whose hands have 

scooped 
His boundless gulfs and built his shore, thy 

breath. 
That moved in the beginning o'er his face, 
Moves o'er it evermore. The obedient waves 
To its strong motion roll, and rise and fall. 
Still from that realm of rain thy cloud goes up. 
As at the first, to water the great earth, 
And keep her valleys green. A huncJred realms 



A HYMN OF THE SEA. 1 43 

Watch its broad shadow warping on the wind, 
And in the dropping shower, with gladness hear 
Thy promise of the harvest. I look forth 
Over the boundless blue, where joyously 
The bright crests of innumerable waves 
Glance to the sun at once, as when the hands 
Of a great multitude are upward flung 
In acclamation. I behold the ships 
GHding from cape to cape, from isle to isle, 
Or stemming toward far lands, or hastening 

home 
From the Old World. It is thy friendly breeze 
That bears them, with the riches of the land, 
And treasure of dear hves, till, in the port. 
The shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail. 



But who shall bide thy tempest, who shall 
face 
The blast that wakes the fury of the sea ? 
Oh God ! thy justice makes the world turn pale, 
When on the armed fleet, that royally 
Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite 
Some city, or invade some thoughtless realm, 
Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks 
Are whirled like chaff upon the waves ; the sails 
Fly, rent Hke webs of gossamer ; the masts 



144 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

Are snapped asunder ; downward from the 

decks, 
Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, 
Their cruel engines ; and their hosts, arrayed 
In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed 
By whirlpools, or dashed dead upon the rocks. 
Then stand the nations still with awe, and 

pause, 
A moment, from the bloody work of war. 

These restless surges eat away the shores 
Of earth's old continents ; the fertile plain 
Welters in shallows, headlands crumble down. 
And the tide drifts the sea-sand in the streets 
Of the drowned city. Thou, meanwhile, afar 
In the green chambers of the middle sea. 
Where broadest spread the waters and the line 
Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, 
Creator ! thou dost teach the coral worm 
To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age. 
He builds beneath the waters, till, at last. 
His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check 
The long wave rolling from the southern pole 
To break upon Japan. Thou bid'st the fires. 
That smoulder under ocean, heave on high 
The new-made mountains, and uplift their 
peaks, 



THE STREAM OF LIFE. 1 45 

A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. 
The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts 
With herb and tree ; sweet fountains gush ; 

sweet airs 
Ripple the living lakes that, fringed with 

flowers, 
Are gathered in the hollows. Thou dost look 
On thy creation and pronounce it good. 
Its valleys, glorious with their summer green, 
Praise thee in silent beauty, and its woods, 
Swept by the murmuring winds of ocean, join 
The murmuring shores in a perpetual hymn. 



THE STREAM OF LIFE. 

Oh silvery streamlet of the fields. 

That flowest full and free ! 
For thee the rains of spring return. 

The summer dews for thee ; 
And when thy latest blossoms die 

In autumn's chilly showers, 
The winter fountains gush for thee. 

Till May brings back the flowers. 



146 BRYANTS POEMS, 

Oh Stream of Life ! the violet springs 

But once beside thy bed ; 
But one brief summer, on thy path, 

The dews of heaven are shed. 
Thy parent fountains shrink away, 

And close their crystal veins. 
And where thy glittering current flowed 

The dust alone remains. 



MIDSUMMER. 

(a sonnet.) 

A POWER is on the earth and in the air. 
From which the vital spirit shrinks afraid, 
And shelters him, in nooks of deepest shade, 
From the hot stream and from the fiery glare. 
Look forth upon the earth — her thousand 
plants 
Are smitten ; even the dark sun-loving 

maize 
Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze ; 
The herd beside the shaded fountain pants ; 
For life is driven from all the landscape brown ; 
The bird has sought his tree, the snake his 
den. 



GREEN RIVER. 1 47 

The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and 
men 
Drop by the sun-stroke in the populace town : 
As if the Day of Fire had dawned, and. sent 
Its deadly breath into the firmament. 



GREEN RIVER. 

When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
I stedl an hour from study and care. 
And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
Where wanders the stream with waters of 

green. 
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink 
Had given their stain to the wave they drink ; 
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through, 
Have named the stream from its own fair hue. 

Yet pure its waters — its shallows are bright 
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light, 
And clear the depths where its eddies play, 
And dimples deepen and whirl away, 
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot 
The swifter current that mines its root, 
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk 

the hill. 
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill 



148 BRYANTS POEMS. 

With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, 
Like the ray that streams from the diamond 

stone. 
Oh, lovehest there the spring days come, 
With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum ; 
The flowers of summer are fairest there. 
And freshest the breath of the summer air ; 
And sweetest the golden autumn day 
In silence and sunshine glides away. 



Yet fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, 
Beautiful stream ! by the village side ; 
But windest away from haunts of men, 
To quiet valley and shaded glen ; 
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill. 
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still. 
Lonely — save when, by thy rippling tides, 
From thicket to thicket the angler glides ; 
Or the simpler comes with basket and book. 
For herbs of power on thy banks to look ; 
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me. 
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. 
Still — save the chirp of birds that feed 
On the river cherry and seedy reed, 
And thy own wild music gushing out 
With mellow murmur and fairy shout. 



GREEN RIVER. 149 

From dawn to the blush of another day, 
Like traveller singing along his way. 

That fairy music I never hear, 
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear, 
And mark them winding away from sight. 
Darkened with shade or flashing with light. 
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings, 
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings. 
But I wish that fate had left me free 
To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 
Till the eating cares of earth should depart. 
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart ; 
And I envy thy stream, as it glides along, 
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song. 

Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men. 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous 

pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd. 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud — 
I often come to this quiet place, 
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face. 
And gaze upon thee in silent dream. 
For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
An image of that calm life appears 
That won my heart in my greener years. 



150 BRYANTS POEMS. 



A WINTER PIECE. 

The time has been that these wild soHtudes, 
Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me 
Oftener than now ; and when the ills of life 
Had chafed my spirit — when the unsteady 

pulse 
Beat with strange flutterings — I would wander 

forth 
And seek the woods. The sunshine on my 

path 
Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, 
The quiet dells retiring far between, 
With gentle invitation to explore 
Their windings, were a calm society 
That talked with me and soothed me. Then 

the chant 
Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress 
Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget 
The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began 
To gather simples by the fountain's brink, 
And lose myself in day-dreams. While I stood 
In nature's loneliness, I was with one 
With whom I early grew familiar, one 
Who never had a frown for me, whose voice 
Never rebuked me for the hours I stole 
From cares I loved not, but of which the world 



A WINTER PIECE. 151 

Deems highest, to converse with her. When 

shrieked 
The bleak November winds, and smote the 

woods, 
And the brown fields were herbless, and the 

shades. 
That met above the merry rivulet, 
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still, — 

they seemed 
Like old companions in adversity. 
Still there was beauty in my walks ; the brook. 
Bordered with sparkling frost-work, was as 

gay 
As with its fringe of summer flowers. Afar, 
The village with its spires, the path of streams. 
And dim receding valleys, hid before 
By interposing trees, lay visible 
Through the bare grove, and my familiar 

haunts 
Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to come 
Among them, when the clouds, from their still 

skirts. 
Had shaken down on earth the feathery snow, 
And all was white. The pure keen air abroad. 
Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor heard 
Love-call of bird nor merry hum of bee, 
Was not the air of death. Bright mosses crept 



152 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, 
That lay along the boughs, instinct with life. 
Patient and waiting the soft breath of Spring, 
Feared not the piercing spirit of the North. 
The snow-bird twittered on the beechen bough. 
And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick branches 

bent 
Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept dry 
A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, 
The partridge found a shelter. Through the 

snow 
The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track 
Of fox, and the racoon's broad path, were there. 
Crossing each other. From his hollow tree. 
The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts 
Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and sway 
Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold. 

But Winter has yet brighter scenes, — he 

boasts 
Splendours beyond what gorgeous Summer 

knows ; 
Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods 
All flushed with many hues. Come when the 

rains 
Have glazed the snow, and clothed the trees 

with ice ; 



A WINTER PIECE. I 53 

While the slant sun of February pours 
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach ! 
The in crusted surface shall upbear thy steps, 
And the broad arching portals of the grove 
Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy 

trunks 
Are cased in the pure crystal ; each hght spray, 
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, 
Is studded with its trembhng water-drops. 
That stream with rainbow radiance as they 

move. 
But round the parent stem the long low boughs 
Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbours hide 
The glassy floor. Oh ! you might deem the 

spot 
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine. 
Deep in the womb of earth — where the gems 

grow, 
And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud 
With amethyst and topaz — and the place 
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam 
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall 
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night. 
And fades not in the glory of the sun ; — 
Where crystal columns send forth slender 

shafts 
And crossing arches ; and fantastic aisles 



154 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost 
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye,— 
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault ; 
There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud 
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams 
Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, 
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air. 
And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light ; 
Light without shade. But all shall pass away 
With the next sun. From numberless vast 

trunks, 
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound 
Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve 
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was wont. 

And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams 
Are just set free, and milder suns melt off 
The plashy snow, save only the firm drift 
In the deep glen or the close shade of pines, — 
'Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of smoke 
Roll up among the maples of the hill. 
Where the shrill sound of youthful voices wakes 
The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph. 
That from the wounded trees, in twinkling 

drops. 
Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, 
Is gathered in with brimming pails, and oft, 



HYMN TO DEATH. 155 

Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of axe 
Makes the woods ring. Along the quiet air, 
Come and float calmly off the soft light clouds, 
Such as you see in summer, and the winds 
Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny 

cleft, 
Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone 
The httle-wind flower, whose just opened eye 
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at — 
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves 
With unexpected beauty, for the time 
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. 
And ere it comes, the encountering winds shall 

oft 
Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds 
Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen 

earth 
Shall fall their volleyed stores rounded like 

hail. 
And white like snow, and the loud North again 
Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage. 



HYMN TO DEATH. 

Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart 
Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem 
My voice unworthy of the theme it tries, - 



156 BRYANTS POEMS. 

I would take up the hymn to Death, and say- 
To the grim power, The world hath slandered 

thee 
And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy 

brow 
They place an iron crown, and call thee king 
Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world, 
Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair. 
The loved, the good — that breathest on the 

lights 
Of virtue set along the vale of Hfe, 
And they go out in darkness. I am come, 
Not with reproaches, not with cries and prayers, 
Such as have stormed thy stern, insensible ear 
From the beginning. I am come to speak 
Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept 
Thy conquests, and may weep them yet again : 
And thou from some I love wilt take a life 
Dear to me as my own. Yet while the spell 
Is on my spirit, and I talk with thee 
In sight of all thy trophies, face to face, 
Meet is it that my voice should utter forth 
Thy nobler triumphs ; I will teach the world 
To thank thee. — Who are thine accusers ? — 

Who? 
The living ! — they who never felt thy power. 
And know thee not. The curses of the wretch 



HYMN TO DEATH. 157 

Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when thy 

hand 
Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come, 
Are writ among thy praises. But the good — 
Does he whom thy kind hand dismissed to 

peace, 
Upbraid the gentle violence that took off 
His fetters, and unbarred his prison cell ? 

Raise then the hymn to death. Deliverer ! 
God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed 
And crush the oppressor. When the armed 

chief, 
The conqueror of nations, walks the world, 
And it is changed beneath his feet, and all 
Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm — 
Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart 
Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand 
Almighty, thou dost set thy sudden grasp 
Upon him, and the links of that strong chain 
That bound mankind are crumbled ; thou dost 

break 
Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to dust. 
Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her 

tribes 
Gather within their ancient bounds again. 
Else had the mighty of the olden time, 



158 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned 
His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet 
The nations with a rod of iron, and driven 
Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost 

avenge, 
In thy good time, the wrongs of those who 

know 
No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose 
Only to lay the sufferer asleep, 
Where he who made him wretched troubles 

not 
His rest — thou dost strike down his tyrant too. 
Oh, there is joy when hands that held the 

scourge 
Drop hfeless, and the pitiless heart is cold 
Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible 
And old idolatries ; — from the proud fanes 
Each to his grave their priests go out, till none 
Is left to teach their worship ; then the fires 
Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss 
O'ercreeps their altars ; the fallen images 
Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns, 
Chanted by kneeling multitudes, the wind 
Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he 
Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all 
The laws that God or man has made, and 

round 



HYMN TO DEATH. I 59 

Hedges his seat with power, and shines in 

wealth, — 
Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Heaven, 
And celebrates his shame in open day. 
Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off 
The horrible example. Touched by thine. 
The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold 
Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, 
Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble 
Against his neighbour's life, and he who 

laughed 
And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame 
Blasted before his own foul calumnies, 
Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold 
His conscience to preserve a worthless life. 
Even while he hugs himself on his escape. 
Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length. 
Thy steps o'ertake him, and there is no time 
For parley — nor will bribes unclench thy grasp. 
Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long 
Ere his last hour. And when the reveller, 
Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on. 
And strains each nerve, and clears the path of 

Hfe 
Like wind, thou point'st him to the dreadful 

goal, 
And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reehng-eye. 



l6o BRYANTS POEMS. 

And check' St him in mid course. Thy skeleton 

hand 
Shows to the faint of spirit the right path, 
And he is warned, and fears to step aside. 
Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime 
Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand 
Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully 
Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, when 

thy shafts 
Drink up the ebbing spirit — then the hard 
Of heart and violent of hand restores 
The treasure to the friendless wretch he 

wronged. 
Then from the writhing bosom thou dost pluck 
The guilty secret ; lips, for ages sealed. 
Are faithless to the dreadful trust at length, 
And give it up ; the felon's latest breath 
Absolves the innocent man who bears his 

crime ; 
The slanderer, horror-smitten, and in tears. 
Recalls the deadly obloquy he forged 
To work his brother's ruin. Thou dost make 
Thy penitent victim utter to the air 
The dark conspiracy that strikes at life, 
And aims to whelm the laws ; ere yet the hour 
Is come, and the dread sign of murder given. 



HYMN TO DEATH. l6l 

Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been 

found 
On virtue's side ! the wicked, but for thee, 
Had been too strong for the good ; the great of 

earth 
Had crushed the weak for ever. Schooled in 

guile 
For ages, while each passing year had brought 
Its baneful lesson, they had filled the world 
With their abominations ; while its tribes. 
Trodden to earth, imbruted, and despoiled. 
Had knelt to them in worship ; sacrifice 
Had smoked on many an altar, temple roofs 
Had echoed with the blasphemous prayer and 

hymn : 
But thou, the great reformer of the world, 
Tak'st off the sons of violence and fraud 
In their green pupilage, their lore half learned — 
Ere guilt had quite o'errun the simple heart 
God gave them at their birth, and blotted out 
His image. Thou dost mark them flushed with 

hope, 
As on the threshold of their vast designs 
Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st them 

down. 



I 62 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Alas ! I little thought that the stern power 
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus 
Before the strain was ended. It must cease — 
For he is in his grave who taught my youth 
The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
Offered me to the muses. Oh, cut off 
Untimely ! when thy reason in its strength, 
Ripened by years of toil and studious search, 
And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught 
Thy hand to practice best the lenient art. 
To which thou gavest thy laborious days, 
And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the 

earth 
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes 
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy 

skill 
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned 

pale 
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, 

which thou 
Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have 
To offer at thy grave — this — and the hope 
To copy thy example, and to leave 
A name of which the wretched shall not think 
As of an enemy's, whom they forgive 
As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou 
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps — 



REVISITING COUNTRY. 163 

Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief sleep 
Of death is over, and a happier hfe 
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust. 

Now thou art not— and yet the men whose 

guilt 
Has wearied Heaven for vengeance— he who 

bears 
False witness— he who takes the orphan's bread, 
And robs the widow— he who spreads abroad 
Polluted hands of mockery of prayer, 
Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I look 
On what is written, yet I blot not out 
The desultory numbers— let them stand, 
The record of an idle revery. 



LINES ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY. 
I STAND upon my native hills again. 
Broad, round, and green, that in the sum- 
mer sky 
With garniture of waving grass and grain, 

Orchards, and beechen forests, basking he. 
While deep the sunless glens are scooped be- 
tween, 
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams un- 
seen. 



I 64 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near, 
And ever restless feet of one, who, now, 

Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year ; 
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young 
brow, 

As breaks the varied scene upon her sight, 

Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light. 

For I have taught her, with delighted eye, 
To gaze upon the mountains, — to behold. 

With deep affection, the pure ample sky, 
And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,— 

To love the song of waters, and to hear 

The melody of winds with charmed ear. 

Here, I have 'scaped the city's stifling heat. 
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air ; 

And, where the season's milder fervours beat, 
And gales, that sweep the forest borders, 
bear 

The song of bird, and sound of running stream, 

Am come awhile to wander and to dream. 

Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun ! thou canst not 
wake. 
In this pure air the plague that walks un- 
seen. 



MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT HEAD. 1 65 

The maize leaf and the maple bough but take, 
From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier 
green. 
The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, 
Sweeps the blue streams of pestilence away. 

The mountain wind ! most spiritual thing of all 
The wide earth knows ; when, in the sultry, 
time, 

He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall. 
He seems the breath of a celestial clime t 

As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow 

Health and refreshment on the world below. 



"UPON THE MOUNTAIN'S DISTANT 
HEAD." 

Upon the mountain's distant head, 
With trackless snows for ever white, 

Where all is still, and cold, and dead, 
Late shines the day's departing light. 

But far below those icy rocks. 

The vales, in summer bloom arrayed. 

Woods full of birds, and fields of flocks. 
Are dim with mist and dark with shade. 



l66 BRYANTS POEMS. 

'Tis thus, from warm and kindly hearts, 
And eyes where generous meanings burn, 

EarHest the hght of hfe departs, 
But hngers with the cold and stern. 



THE JOURNEY OF LIFE. 

Beneath the waning moon I walk at night. 
And muse on human life — for all around 
Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight. 
And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground. 
And broken gleams of brightness, here and 

there. 
Glance through, and leave unwarmed the 
death-like air. 



The trampled earth returns a sound of fear — 
A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs ; 

And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear 
Far off, and die Hke hope amid the glooms. 

A mournful wind across the landscape flies, 

And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs. 

And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on, 
Watching the stars that roll the hours away, 



LOVE AND FOLLY. 1 67 

Till the faint light that guides me now is gone, 

And, like another life, the glorious day 
Shall open o'er me from the empyreal height, 
With warmth, and certainty, and boundless 
light. 



LOVE AND FOLLY. 

(from la FONTAINE.) 

Love's worshippers alone can know 

The thousand mysteries that are his ; 
His blazing torch, his twanging bow, 

His blooming age are mysteries. 
A charming science — but the day 

Were all too short to con it o'er ; 
So take of me this little lay, 

A sample of its boundless lore. 

As once, beneath the fragrant shade 

Of myrtles breathing heaven's own air, 
The children, Love and Folly, played — 

A quarrel rose betwixt the pair. 
Love said the gods should do him right — 

But Folly vowed to do it then. 
And struck him, o'er the orbs of sight, 

So hard he never saw again. 



1 68 BRYANTS POEMS. 

His lovely mother's grief was deep, 

She called for vengeance on the deed ; 
A beauty does not vainly weep, 

Nor coldly does a mother plead. 
A shade came o'er the eternal bliss 

That fills the dwellers of the skies ; 
Even stony-hearted Nemesis, 

And Rhadamanthus, wiped their eyes. 

"Behold," she said, "this lovely boy," 

While streamed afresh her graceful tears, 
" Immortal, yet shut out from joy 

And sunshine, all his future years. 
The child can never take, you see, 

A single step without a staff — 
The harshest punishment would be 

Too lenient for the crime by half." 



All said that Love had suffered wrong. 

And well that wrong should be repaid ; 
Then weighed the public interest long, 

And long the party's interest weighed. 
And thus decreed the court above — 

" Since Love is blind from Folly's blow. 
Let Folly be the guide of Love, 

Where'er the boy may choose to go." 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 1 69 

THE LOVE OF GOD. 

(from the PROVENCAL OF BERNARD RASCAS.) 

All things that are on earth shall wholly- 
pass away, 
Except the love of God, which shall live and 

last for aye. 
The forms of men shall be as they had never 

been ; 
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and 

tender green ; 
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant 

song, 
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the 

evening long. 
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that 

kills, 
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from 

the hills. 
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the 

fox. 
The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of 

the rocks, 
And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden 

dust shall he ; 
And the dolphin of the sea, and the mighty 

whale, shall die. 



170 BRYANT'S POEMS. 

And realms shall be dissolved, and empires be 

no more, 
And they shall bow to death, who ruled from 

shore to shore ; 
And the great globe itself, (so the holy writings 

tell,) 
With the rolling firmament, where the starry 

armies dwell. 
Shall melt with fervent heat — they shall all 

pass away, 
Except the love of God, which shall live and 

last for aye. 



EARTH. 

A MIDNIGHT black with clouds is in the sky ; 
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight 
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain 
Turns the tired eye in search of form ; no star 
Pierces the pitchy veil ; no ruddy blaze. 
From dwellings hghted by the cheerful hearth, 
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass. 
No sound of life is heard, no village hum. 
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path. 
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth, 
I lie and listen to her mighty voice : 



EARTH. 171 

A voice of many tones— sent up from streams 
That wander through the gloom, from woods 

unseen, 
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air. 
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all 

day. 
And hollows of the great invisible hills, 
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far 
Into the night — a melancholy sound ! 

O Earth ! dost thou too sorrow for the past 
Like man thy offspring ? Do I hear thee mourn 
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs 
Gone with their genial airs and melodies, 
The gentle generations of thy flowers, 
And thy majestic groves of olden time. 
Perished with all their dwellers ? Dost thou 

wail 
For that fair age of which the poets tell. 
Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost, or fire 
Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills, 
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night 
Was guiltless and salubrious as the day ? 
Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die— 
For living things that trod thy paths awhile. 
The loye of thee and heaven— and now they 
sleep 



172 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy 

herds 
Trample and graze ? I too must grieve with 

thee, 
O'er loved ones lost. Their graves are far 

away 
Upon thy mountains ; yet, while I recline 
Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil. 
The mighty nourisher and burial-place 
Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust. 



Ha ! how the murmur deepens ! I perceive 
And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth 
Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong. 
And heaven is listening. The forgotten graves 
Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint. 
The dust of her who loved and was betrayed, 
And him who died neglected in his age ; 
The sepulchres of those who for mankind 
Laboured, and earned the recompense of scorn ; 
Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones 
Of those who, in the strife for liberty, 
Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs. 
Their names to infamy, all find a voice. 
The nook in which the captive, overtoiled, 
Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds 



EARTH. 173 

Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel 

hands, 
Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields, 
Where heroes madly drave and dashed their 

hosts 
Against each other, rises up a noise. 
As if the armed multitudes of dead 
Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones 
Come from the green abysses of the sea — 
A story of the crimes the guilty sought 
To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the 

groves, 
Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook. 
And banks and depths of lake, and streets and 

lanes 
Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed, 
Murmur of guilty force and treachery. 

Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy 
Are round me, populous from early time, 
And field of the tremendous warfare waged 
'Twixt good and evil. Who, alas, shall dare . 
Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice 
That comes from her old dungeons yawning now 
To the black air, her amphitheatres, 
Where the dew gathers on the mouldering 
stones, 



174 BRYANTS POEMS. 

And fanes of banished gods, and open tombs. 
And roofless palaces, and streets and hearths 
Of cities dug from their volcanic graves ? 
I hear a sound of many languages. 
The utterance of nations now no more, 
Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven 
Chase one another from the sky. The blood 
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords 
Came in the hour of weakness, and made fast 
The yoke that yet is worn, cries out to Heaven. 

What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle 

Earth, 
From all its painful memories of guilt .? 
The whelming flood, or the renewing fire. 
Or the slow change of time ? that so, at last. 
The horrid tale of perjury and strife. 
Murder and spoil, which men call history. 
May seem a fable, like the inventions told 
By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou, 
Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep, 
Among the sources of thy glorious streams, 
My native Land of Groves ! a newer page 
In the great record of the world is thine ; 
Shall it be fairer ? Fear, and friendly hope, 
And envy, watch the issue, while the lines, 
By which thou shalt be judged, are written 

down. 



CATTERSKILL FALLS. 1 75 

CATTERSKILL FALLS. 

Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps, 
From diffs where the wood-flower clings ; 

All summer he moistens his verdant steeps 
With the sweet light spray of the mountain 
springs ; 

And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, 

When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide. 

But when, in the forest bare and old, 

The blast of December calls, 
He builds, in the starlight clear and cold, 

A palace of ice where his torrent falls. 
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, 
And pillars blue as the summer air. 

For whom are those glorious chambers wrought, 

In the cold and cloudless night ? 
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought 

In forms so lovely, and hues so bright ? 
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell 
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell. 

'Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood, 

A hundred winters ago, 
Had wandered over the mighty wood. 



176 BRYANTS POEMS, 

When the panther's track was fresh on the 
snow, 
And keen were the winds that came to stir 
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir. 

Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair, 
For a child of those rugged steeps ; 

His home lay low in the valley where 
The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps ; 

But he wore the hunter's frock that day. 

And a slender gun on his shoulder lay. 

And here he paused, and against the trunk 

Of a tall gray linden leant. 
When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk 

From his path in the frosty firmament, 
And over the round dark edge of the hill 
A cold green light was quivering still. 

And the crescent moon, high over the green, 

From a sky of crimson shone, 
On that icy palace, whose towers were seen 

To sparkle as if with stars of their ov/n ; 
While the water fell with a hollow sound, 
'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around. 

Is that a being of life, that moves 
Where the crystal battlements rise ? 



CATTERSKILL FALLS. I 77 

A maiden watching the moon she loves, 

At the twihght hour, with pensive eyes ? 
Was that a garment which seemed to gleam 
Betwixt the eye and the falling stream ? 



*Tis only the torrent tumbling o'er. 
In the midst of those glassy walls. 

Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor 
Of the rocky basin in which it falls. 

'Tis only the torrent — but why that start ? 

Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart ? 

He thinks no more of his home afar. 

Where his sire and sister wait. 
He heeds no longer how star after star 

Looks forth on the night as the hour grows 
late. 
He heeds not the snow-wreaths, lifted and cast 
From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast. 

His thoughts are alone of those who dwell 

In the halls of frost and snow. 
Who pass where the crystal domes upswell 

From the alabaster floors below, 
Where the frost-trees shoot with leaf and spray, 
And frost-gems scatter a silvery day. 



178 BRYANTS POEMS. 

"And oh that those glorious haunts were mine !" 
He speaks, and throughout the glen 

Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine, 
And take a ghastly Ukeness of men, 

As if the slain by the wintry storms 

Came forth to the air in their earthly forms. 

There pass the chasers of seal and whale. 
With their weapons quaint and grim, 

And bands of warriors in glittering mail. 
And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb. 

There are naked arms, with bow and spear, 

And furry gauntlets the carbine rear. 

There are mothers — and oh how sadly their 
eyes 

On their children's white brows rest ! 
There are youthful lovers — the maiden lies. 

In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast ; 
There are fair wan women with moonstruck air, 
The snow stars flecking their long loose hair. 

They eye him not as they pass along, 
But his hair stands up with dread. 

When he feels that he moves with that phan- 
tom throng. 
Till those icy turrets are over his head, 



CATTERSKILL FALLS. I 79 

And the torrent's roar as they enter seems 
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams. 

The glittering threshold is scarcely passed, 
When there gathers and wraps him round 

A thick white twilight, sullen and vast, 
In which there is neither form nor sound ; 

The phantoms, the glory, vanish all, 

With the dying voice of the waterfall. 

Slow passes the darkness of that trance. 

And the youth now faintly sees 
Huge shadows and gushes of light that dance 

On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees, 
And walls where the skins of beasts are hung, 
And rifles ghtter on antlers strung. 

On a couch of shaggy skins he lies ; 

As he strives to raise his head, 
Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes. 

Come round him and smooth his furry bed, 
And bid him rest, for the evening star 
Is scarcely set and the day is far. 

They had found at eve the dreaming one 

By the base of that icy steep. 
When over his stiffening limbs begun 



l8o BRYANTS POEMS. 

The deadly slumber of frost to creep, 
And they cherished the pale and breathless 

form, 
Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm. 



LIFE. 

Oh Life ! I breathe thee in the breeze, 
I feel thee bounding in my veins, 

I see thee in these stretching trees. 

These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains. 

This stream of odours flowing by 

From clover-field and clumps of pine, 

This music, thrilling all the sky, 

From all the morning birds, are thine. 

Thou fill'st with joy this little one, 

That leaps and shouts beside me here, 

Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run 

Through the dark woods like frighted deer. 

Ah ! must thy mighty breath, that wakes 
Insect and bird, and flower and tree. 

From the low trodden dust, and makes 
Their daily gladness, pass from me — 



LIFE. i8l 

Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the ground 

These limbs, now strong, shall creep with 
pain, 

And this fair world of sight and sound 
Seem fading into night again ? 

The things, oh Life ! thou quickenest, all 
Strive upward toward the broad bright sky, 

Upward and outward, and they fall 
Back to earth's bosom when they die. 

All that have borne the touch of death, 
All that shall live, lie mingled there. 

Beneath that veil of bloom and breath, 
That living zone 'twixt earth and air. 

There lies my chamber dark and still, 

The atoms trampled by my feet. 
There wait, to take the place I fill 

In the sweet air and sunshine sweet. 

Well, I have had my turn, have been 
Raised from the darkness of the clod, 

And for a glorious moment seen 

The brightness of the skirts of God ; 

And knew the light within my breast. 
Though wavering oftentimes and dim. 



1 82 BRYANTS POEMS. 

The power, the will, that never rest, 
And cannot die, were all from him. 

Dear child ! I know that thou wilt grieve 
To see me taken from thy love. 

Wilt seek my grave at Sabbath eve. 
And weep, and scatter flowers above. 

Thy little heart will soon be healed. 
And being shall be bliss, till thou 

To younger forms of life must yield 
The place thou fill'st with beauty now. 

When we descend to dust again, 
Where will the final dwelling be 

Of Thought and all its memories then. 
My love for thee, and thine for me ? 



THE FOUNTAIN. 

Fountain, that springest on this grassy slope, 
Thy quick cool murmur mingles pleasantly, 
With the cool sound of breezes in the beach, 
Above me in the noontide. Thou dost wear 
No stain of thy dark birthplace ; gushing up 
From the red mould and slimy roots of earth. 
Thou flashest in the sun. The mountain air, 



THE FOUNTAIN. 183 

In winter, is not clearer, nor the dew 

That shines on mountain blossom. Thus doth 

God 
Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and 

bright. 

This tangled thicket on the bank above 
Thy basin, how thy waters keep it green ! 
For thou dost feed the roots of the wild vine 
That trails all over it, and to the twigs 
Ties fast her clusters. There the spice-bush 

lifts 
Her leafy lances ; the viburnum there. 
Paler of foliage, to the sun holds up 
Her circlet of green berries. In and out 
The chipping sparrow, in her coat of brown, 
Steals silently, lest I should mark her nest. 

Not such thou wert of yore, ere yet the axe 
Had smitten the old woods. Then hoary 

trunks 
Of oak, and plane, and hickory, o'er thee held 
A mighty canopy. When April winds 
Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush 
Of scarlet flowers. The tulip-tree, high up, 
Opened, in airs of June, her multitude 
Of golden chalices to humming-birds 
And silken-winged insects of the sky. 



1 84 BRYANTS POEMS. 

Frail wood-plants clustered round thy edge 

in Spring. 
The liverleaf put forth her sister blooms 
Of faintest blue. Here the quick-footed wolf, 
Passing to lap thy waters, crushed the flower 
Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem 
The red drops fell like blood. The deer, too, 

left 
Her delicate foot-print in the soft moist mould. 
And on the fallen leaves. The slow-paced 

bear, 
In such a sultry summer noon as this. 
Stopped at thy stream, and drank, and leaped 

across. 

But thou hast histories that stir the heart 
With deeper feeling ; while I look on thee 
They rise before me. I behold the scene 
Hoary again with forests ; I behold 
The Indian warrior, whom a hand unseen 
Has smitten with his death -wound in the woods, 
Creep slowly to thy well-known rivulet. 
And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick 

fierce cry 
That rends the utter silence ; 'tis the whoop 
Of battle, and a throng of savage men 
With naked arms and faces stained like blood, 



THE FOUNTAIN. 185 

Fill the green wilderness ; the long bare arms 
Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows 

stream ; 
Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree 
Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and 

short. 
As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors 
And conquered vanish, and the dead remain 
Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods 
Are still again, the frighted bird comes back 
And plumes her wings ; but thy sweet waters 

run 
Crimson with blood. Then, as the sun goes 

down. 
Amid the deepening twilight I descry 
Figures of men that crouch and creep unheard, 
And bear away the dead. The next day's 

shower 
Shall wash the tokens of the fight away. 

I look again — a hunter's lodge is built, 
With poles and boughs, beside thy crystal well. 
While the meek autumn stains the woods with 

gold. 
And sheds his golden sunshine. To the door 
The red man slowly drags the enormous bear 
Slain in the chestnut thicket, or flings down 



1 86 BRYANTS POEMS. 

The deer from his strong shoulders. Shaggy 

fells 
Of wolf and cougar hang upon the walls, 
And loud the black-eyed Indian maidens laugh, 
That gather, from the rustling heaps of leaves, 
The hickory's white nuts, and the dark fruit 
That falls from the gray butternut's long boughs. 

So centuries passed by, and still the woods 
Blossomed in spring, and reddened when the 

year 
Grew chill, and glistened in the frozen rains 
Of winter, till the white man swung the axe 
Beside thee — signal of a mighty change. 
Then all around was heard the crash of trees. 
Trembling awhile and rushing to the ground, 
The low of ox, and shouts of men who fired 
The brushwood, or who tore the earth with 

ploughs. 
The grain sprang thick and tall, and hid in green 
The blackened hill-side ; ranks of spiky maize 
Rose like a host embattled ; the buckwheat 
Whitened broad acres, sweetening with its 

flowers 
The August wind. White cottages were seen 
With rose-trees at the windows ; barns from 

which 



THE FOUNTAIN. 187 

Came loud and shrill the crowing of the cock ; 
Pastures where rolled and neighed the lordly 

horse, 
And white flocks browsed and bleated. A rich 

turf 
Of grasses brought from far o'ercrept thy bank, 
Spotted with the white clover. Blue-eyed girls 
Brought pails and dipped them in thy crystal 

pool; 
And children, ruddy-cheeked and flaxen-haired. 
Gathered the glistening cowslip from thy edge. 

Since then, what steps have trod thy border ! 
Here 
Qi> thy green bank, the woodman of the swamp 
Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill 
His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream. 
The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still 
September noon, has bathed his heated brow 
In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose 
For a wild holiday, have quaintly shaped 
Into a cup the folded linden leaf. 
And dipped thy sliding crystal. From the wars 
Returning, the plumed soldier by thy side 
Has sat, and mused how pleasant 'twere to 

dwell 
In such a spot, and be as free as thou. 



1 88 BRYANTS POEMS. 

And move for no man's bidding more. At eve, 
When thou wert crimson with the crimson sky, 
Lovers have gazed upon thee, and have thought 
Their mingled lives should flow as peacefully 
And brightly as thy waters. Here the sage, 
Gazing into thy self-replenished depth, 
Has seen eternal order circumscribe 
And bind the motions of eternal change, 
And from the gushing of thy simple fount 
Has reasoned to the mighty universe. 

Is there no other change for thee, that lurks 
Among the future ages ? Will not man 
Seek out strange arts to wither and deform 
The pleasant landscape which thou makest 

green ? 
Or shall the veins that feed thy constant stream 
Be choked in middle earth, and flow no more 
For ever, that the water-plants along 
Thy channel perish, and the bird in vain 
Ahght to drink ? Haply shall these green hills 
Sink, with the lapse of years, into the gulf 
Of ocean waters, and thy source be lost 
Amidst the bitter brine ? Or shall they rise. 
Upheaved in broken cliffs and airy peaks, 
Haunts of the eagle and the snake, and thou 
Gush midway from the bare and barren steep ? 



